


Snow

by protagonist_m



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Bottom Harry, Christmas, Cocaine, Dysfunctional Relationships, Eleanor and Simon are mentioned, Fireman Liam, Louis hates his job, M/M, Model Zayn, Oral Sex, Pining, Rimming, Slow Burn, Substance Abuse, University Student Harry, Winter, Zayn hates his job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-01 08:56:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2767217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protagonist_m/pseuds/protagonist_m
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis and his boyfriend Zayn's post-university move to London is meant to be the start of their story. It doesn't account for things like boys across the hall with stupid giant eyes or kind souls with too much time on their hands. It certainly doesn't account for horrible jobs and worse methods of coping.</p><p>AU in which Louis and Zayn are meant to be, except for how they aren't, and Louis is trapped in some weird cross between Requiem For a Dream and Love, Actually. All just in time for Christmas.</p><p>Happy holidays, everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Centa0592](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Centa0592/gifts).



> Originally written for the HL Winter Fic Exchange Prompt:
> 
> "Zayn and Louis are in a committed relationship going on for three years now but when two Uni flatmates move in next door, Louis finds it hard to stop looking at the one guy with broad shoulder's doing yoga, and Zayn finds it hard to look away from the one guy who refuses to wear a shirt even though its' December."
> 
> I may have strayed a bit, but the core ideas are the same. Uh, but with more drugs. Sorry about that.
> 
> Anyway. Enjoy!

There’s a moving van in Louis’ parking spot.

Which, unless Zayn has forgotten to tell him something, is a mistake.

Side-stepping the puddle outside the car door in an unreserved spot— _much_ less convenient than the one directly by the stairs that Louis, you know, _pays_ for—Louis trots up the two flights to their flat, perplexed and annoyed.

He turns the knob and swings the door inward with a gentle kick, already unbuttoning his work shirt, braces hanging at his sides.

“Are we moving?” he calls into the flat. The smell hits him, tea and cologne and _them,_ essentially, their flat, and his pulse calms for it. The late afternoon light is dull, but the lamps in the living room are warm, pulling the gold tones out of everything their light blankets.

“What? No,” a voice echoes out from the en suite. “Why?”

Louis finally shrugs off his button-down, adjusting the thin cotton shirt underneath. “Oh, just. There’s a van. A moving van. In my spot.” He strides into their bathroom, watching Zayn watch him in the mirror.

“Sucks,” Zayn says, unbothered. He leans in close to the mirror, smoothing his eyebrows repeatedly.

With a huff that’s more affectionate than put out, Louis hooks his chin over the man’s shoulder. The bathroom light is bright and too stark. Louis frowns at the subtle bags under his eyes it creates, makes a note to buy a different bulb next time he’s out.

“They’re going to slather you in makeup when you get there anyway,” he murmurs, watching Zayn’s careful fingers pull at his quiff. “You’re also gorgeous, which helps. Hey, stop fussing.” He lays a kiss to Zayn’s jaw.

“I’m not fussing.”

“You are.” The words end up mumbled into Zayn’s neck, because he’s just used that aftershave Louis loves and oh, dear, he’d only meant to offer a bit of moral support before Zayn’s gig but the headrush of Zayn’s proximity clearly indicates a change of plans. “You always do,” he murmurs, slurred against the hot pulse of Zayn’s throat.

“Mmm, doesn’t sound like me,” Zayn says quietly. Louis’ eyes flick up to the bathroom mirror, noting the intensity of Zayn’s stare on their bodies wrapped around each other in the mirror. Their eyes lock in the glass.

“Does,” Louis returns.

It’s a familiar back and forth, a comfortable rhythm. It’s not really surprising when Zayn spins them around and backs Louis up against the counter, pulling Louis’ trousers down with practiced motions.

“Does not,” Zayn returns, face close and eyes already trained on Louis’ cock through his pants. He pulls at the collar of Louis’ shirt, nipping at the junction of his neck and shoulder. Louis shudders, hands laced behind Zayn’s neck. His pinkies trace the subtle scarring of the fantail bird he has tattooed between his shoulder blades,  a souvenir from their anniversary spent in New Zealand.

With the way Zayn is mouthing at his nipples through his tee, it takes a few breaths to get out, but finally Louis manages.“You fuss. You’re—fussy.”

“Want me to suck you off now?” Zayn enquires mildly as he sinks to his knees. Louis hums as if to say _Much obliged._

Louis has been in love with Zayn for nearly four years. He’s been in love with the look of him on his knees for even longer. Zayn’s always beautiful, but this angle turns him into pure sexual devastation, huge shining eyes staring up at Louis while his cheeks hollow around the length of him. His jean-clad knees are planted on the fluffy bathroom rug, but they splay slightly, like Zayn is having as much trouble keeping it together as Louis is. His eyes flutter briefly as he does something complicated with his tongue. Then the eye contact returns, and Louis feels it everywhere.

He gets off to the look of Zayn sucking him off as much as the action itself. Which says something, because Zayn’s mouth was all but made for sucking cock. They’ve discussed it many times.

“That’s it, thaaat’s it, right there….” Louis breathes out, hands braced on the counter. Zayn’s eyes water a bit as he pushes himself further down. Louis grunts, working to keep his hips still.

It’s not long before Zayn is swallowing around the pulse of Louis’ cock while he comes apart. Louis has barely ridden out the aftershocks before Zayn is standing, examining himself in the mirror once again.

“Thanks for not fucking up my hair,” Zayn says through swollen lips, pressing a quick kiss to Louis’ mouth. “I gotta head out.”

Louis nods, dizzied by the speed of Zayn’s goodbye. “Love you,” he says automatically.

“Love you too.”

“See you tonight.”

“Yeah.” And the flat door snicks shut behind Zayn, leaving Louis to smooth his fringe and examine his own bitten-red lips and flushed skin.

It’s only when he’s curled up with his tea and a magazine that he recalls the irksome van, but when he checks out the window overlooking the car park, it’s gone.

 _Good,_ Louis thinks, and forgets about it.

***

Zayn is indeed slathered in makeup when he returns hours later. His arrival coincides with dinner, so he doesn’t bother to wash the gunk off before he sits gratefully for the pasta Louis’ prepared.

“They made me hold this black box for most of it,” he says as they eat. “Like, a cube.” He spears three penne at a time, eating with a gusto his slim build would never hint at. Standing about looking lovely is famishing, Louis’ learned. “Told me to move it around and, like, smolder.” He smolders at Louis to emphasize.

“What was the shoot for?” Louis asks, voice echoing into his pint as he takes a sip.

“ _Umbrellas_ ,” Zayn groans. “I didn’t even _see_ a bleeding umbrella all day. And when I asked they just—” he smiles wide and mocking, shaking his head patronizingly and tutting “—because, you know. Models are idiots by nature.”

“Of course,” Louis says, mostly to keep up the pretense that he’s listening.

The pattern is this: Zayn books a gig, spends a day or so posing as needed while affecting a look of haughty boredom, and then comes back to the flat to complain about it to Louis, who listens intently. Mostly.

“Hmm, your _body_ is here,” Zayn observes, “but I suspect your brain is not.”

Louis looks up from his pint to meet Zayn’s eyes. “Sorry, tired.”

“Ah, well.” Zayn shrugs, but he’s still fixated. “I mean, I get that it’s not—you know. It’s not your thing, but.” His mouth is downturned.

Louis wants to argue that. Modeling is totally his thing. He’s the one _bedding_ a model, after all, albeit a part-time one.

Instead, he says, “Babe, no. I’m sorry, I’ll listen.”

Zayn shakes his head, scraping at the last of the parmesan on his plate. “It’s okay. It was just another modeling gig, yeah? Same thing each time.” It’s not said aggressively. It’s not said with the motive of making Louis feel like the shittiest boyfriend on the planet. And yet.

Louis opens his mouth to launch into the reflexive rant he has prepared—modeling is a perfectly valid choice while Zayn gets his teaching certification, he’s a brilliant mind and he’s doing _so_ well, is _so_ driven—but it doesn’t come.

He really is very tired.

For a moment, there’s nothing but the sound of their silverware clinking as they finish. Louis draws a pattern with his tongs in a smear of sauce.

“Do you have tomorrow off?” Zayn asks with forced easiness, trying to erase the tension.

Letting out a loud breath, Louis shakes his head. “I’m heading a new project this week, so tomorrow’s the only time I can really sit down with Grimshaw and nail down—”

“That fucking press release,” the other man finishes, voice lilting over the familiar words.

Louis works for what could be considered a reputable, sought after, _competitive_ public relations firm. It’s all shining smiles and ugly secrets that need the right words to buff their edges when they (inevitably) come to light. And after  uni, it was a package too beautiful to resist: centrally located in London, a tube ride from the well-sized flat the salary afforded them.

When he got the offer, Zayn had wrapped him in a twirling hug, knocking them back onto the sofa and a subsequent snog session that was as much thrilled giggling as it was kissing.

“You made it, babe,” Zayn had sung against Louis’ skin. “You’re fucking smashing it.”

Meanwhile, Zayn does _Zoolander_ impressions for catalogs. It’s not the job teaching English he wants, but that’s a few years off still, and Louis is more than happy to support him through his schooling.

It’s just.

“So you won’t be here tomorrow?” Zayn asks, eyes already dimmed by disappointment in his response.

Louis shrugs helplessly. “I’ll get home as soon as I can, Z. It’s a tricky press release. And Grimshaw’s a knob.” Grimshaw _is_ a knob, and it _is_ a tricky press release—a politician’s high-profile infidelity with an illegitimate child thrown into the mix—but more than that, it needs a lot of time. Everything has to be second-guessed, looked at through multiple lenses, spun to best advantage. After Louis _writes_ the damn thing, three other people have to okay it before it’s considered print-ready.

It just takes time.

Zayn traces the grain of the wooden table with his freshly manicured nails, not looking at Louis when he says, “Tomorrow’s my only day off this week.”`

Louis’ heart sinks, because the seed of disappointment has been planted in his boyfriend’s heart, and it’s going to inevitably grow over the next hour, day, week. Zayn deserves Louis’ free time. Louis _wants_ to give it to him.

There’s nothing for it, though.

“I’ll make it quick as I can, love,” he says, keeping his high tenor sweet despite his exhaustion. He reaches for Zayn’s hand. It’s limp, a little chilly as he brings it up to his mouth and kisses each knuckle. “Wanna be here with my _pahaari kaawwa_.”

“It’s gonna take all day, Lou,” Zayn whines, but his mouth turns up at the nickname. It’s raven in Urdu, something Louis had looked up two months into knowing the boy, when he’d mentioned his verbal fluency in the language.

He’d hoped to be impressive, converting his pet name for his new friend to one of Zayn’s other languages. It was Modern Standard, not even a dialect, but it was the best he could do (or get Google to do) and anyway, Zayn’s eyes had sparkled when he’d used it, practiced syllables coming out only a little stilted that first time.

Louis hums against his boyfriend’s skin. “Yeah, but it’ll be a _quick_ all day.”

Zayn stares at their joined hands. “That’s not a thing.”

“It’s a thing, it’s definitely a thing.” Louis is slowly becoming entranced by Zayn’s hand against his mouth. Without conscious thought, he drags his lips against the tip of his index finger, parting his lips slightly to suck the tip of the digit into his mouth.

A lazy smile graces Zayn’s face. “Wanna finish what we started earlier?”

“ _I_ finished. You, however, did not,” Louis says, tone languorous as he nips at the end of Zayn’s finger. He stands, dragging Zayn with him. “C’mon, I want you to fuck me. And then tomorrow we’ll get a bottle of wine and some, I dunno, truffles, and have a night in when I get home.”

“Truffles?” Zayn asks, interest caught. “Awesome, yes. Count me in, hundred percent.”

They kiss, and it’s more end-of-a-long-day-slow than it is passionate and meaningful, but Louis finds it kind of beautiful. It’s domestic and sweet, he thinks, that the can share boring kisses. They’re completely comfortable with each other.

And they should be, really.

 

The story of how Zayn and Louis met is so often called-upon, they no longer think before launching into the tale.

“We met through my ex,” Zayn says.

“Before she was an ex,” Louis says, always with a cheeky wink.

“There was just… _something,_ ” Zayn says, and smiles.

“We got on immediately,” Louis agrees.

“Perrie and I broke it off, and exactly two weeks later…” Zayn begins.

“I was waiting on his doorstep,” Louis finishes.

“With a single rose,” Zayn adds.

“And the rest is history.”

And for the last three-nearly-four years, people have cooed and fawned over it, and all that came after. They fell in love after three months, moved in after a year, graduated after two, and began to make some rather large decisions.

They’d moved to London that spring. They kissed in the streets and cuddled on the couch when it stormed and took a first, tentative trip to a jeweler, smiles private and hearts bursting.

Sometimes, Louis imagines the ring already on his finger, the glint of gold against his tan skin, beautiful and solid and weighty, like a promise.

 ***

Grimshaw proves his own knob-headedness when he informs Louis within half an hour of his arrival to their near-empty office Sunday morning, that he’s actually headed out.

“A friend of mine needs help, but it _has_ to be today,” he explains, smarmy grin lit by something a little dirtier than the conversation calls for.

Louis narrows his eyes. “Does it.”

“ _Yes._ ,” Grimshaw implores.

Arms crossed, Louis refuses to break.

Grimshaw isn’t nearly so stubborn, though. “ _Come on_ ,” he whines. “I know you can manage this.”

Louis looks around the man’s office, takes in the personal photos of parties and lovely people and excess, essentially, and the overbearing, old-school radio microphone on top of the nearest shelf. He sighs. Nick Grimshaw is not to be controlled, a charming sort of natural disaster—a whorenado, to be specific—and while his gift with words is appreciated, while he has in all actuality been assigned to _work_ with Louis on this,  Louis knows he can manage without.

He’s not going to be anything less than a brat about it, though. It is _Nick,_ after all.

So he pouts as they work through the first few minutes of the project, making snippy comments and taking the piss as often as he breathes. It makes him feel a little better.

“Aw, Footie Barbie,” Nick finally drawls, “don’t be like that. I’ll do the next one and barely even bug you over it, promise. Just—help me out today, yeah? I _really_ need to—”

“I don’t want to know, Nick—” Louis snaps.

“—help my friend,” Nick finishes innocently.

The implication is clear, though. The two are a study in contrasts; while Louis moved to the city with the love of his life, Nick is eight years his senior and shows no indication of settling down. Louis tries to be methodical with his work, fighting his own chaotic nature to prove he deserves his position. Nick, meanwhile, embraces his own disorder and constantly sends Louis into apoplectic fits of panic and annoyance.

The vexing truth is that Louis admires Nick, for his charm and wild creativity and ability to pull brilliance out his arse. He imagines he gets rather lonely, though, filling the void of a relationship with endless hookups. He’s having fun, at least. Louis is sure he’ll get to hear all about it on Monday.

Which is…tomorrow. Right.

Louis spends the day in his own office (sparser and smaller than Nick’s, but then, he’s been there less than a year), wrestling over the best way for their client to claim responsibility without actually claiming any responsibility in their public show of contrition. It’s boring, and it comes out pretty standard, but Louis knows he won’t be satisfied until he’s cross-checked each individual claim with the angle they’re pushing for this whole debacle.  

“Blah blah blah, wish to avoid involving innocent parties,” Louis mutters to himself, typing away, “blah blah, circumstances change, a choice between what is easy and what is right, blah blah _blah_.”

He looks up from his laptop occasionally to watch the day pass in ever-darkening shades of London grey through his window. Zayn is undoubtedly curled up on the couch, perusing his coursework or sketching, or reading a novel thick as his forearm. He’s probably drinking tea from the big mug that makes his ink-stained fingers look extra slender.

Louis’ life is deeply, deeply unfair.

It’s completely dark before Louis is satisfied that the job is done. He stands, giving the press release a final sweep with tired eyes before hitting the send icon and officially making it his supervisor’s problem. He checks the clock.

It’s a quarter six in the evening. Louis knows it’s better than he’ll manage tomorrow. He gathers his possessions and flicks the light off, throwing a crisps package in the bin and leaving the eeriness of the deserted office behind as quickly as he can manage.

The grocery is surprisingly empty, and it takes Louis a second to remember it’s because it is, in fact, Sunday. By all accounts, he should be in trackies with Zayn’s head in his lap while he reads.

The lights are glaring in the stark aisles, and Louis’ already running on too little food. He feels a bit beyond done with the day, at this point, but he still finds the chocolates he know Zayn likes best and a bottle of red.

The evening humidity clings to Louis unpleasantly when he arrives outside the flat. It makes his wool coat seem itchier and hotter, despite the frigid October night. He longs for one of his worn Stone Roses shirts, some tea, Zayn’s body to tuck his frigid feet under.

Only, when he finally fumbles open the lock on the door, Zayn is nowhere to be seen, and the flat holds an aura of emptiness.

 “Z?” he calls out anyway.

Zayn’s not there to answer, though, and Louis is putting the kettle on when he finally notices the post-it on the fridge.

His thumb is already poised on his phone’s call button. He cradles it loosely in his fingers as he reads over the note.

_Babe –_

_Phone's dead, can't find my charger. Did you grab it? New neighbors--invited us over for tea in 406. Show up when you get back._

_–Z_

Louis crumples the note absently. That’s the moving van mystery solved, then. He’s in the midst of wondering if it’d be weird to bring the truffles and roses as flatwarming gifts when he feels his mobile begin to slip from his slack grip.

A light sort of dread settles in Louis’ gut as he picks it back up off the wood floor from its front-down position.

“Shit.”

The screen is shattered, which. Not what Louis needed right now, but it makes him all the more grateful for a job that allows him such luxuries as £70 screen repairs.

Even if the hours are shit. He imagines, momentarily, his sweet, reserved Zayn suffering alone through a polite tea with overreaching strangers.

He’s swiftly  out the door.

Though not before changing into his Stone Roses shirt.

Number 406 is directly opposite his and Zayn’s flat, so it’s not like it’s a long enough walk for him to properly brace himself for whatever he’s about to encounter. He takes a moment outside the door, pulling a charming smile  out from under the weight of the unplanned workday.

He knocks twice, fidgeting a bit as he waits in the dim hall. Louis can hear a sound like a clock ticking. He’s always wondered about that—it was a noise that seemed to come standard with every flat he’d ever lived in. Was it the sound of the heating system, or did someone truly have a grandfather clock here? What had  _that_ been like to move in?

Louis was already so dead on his feet from the day that he didn’t completely process the door opening.

Did he expect an older couple? Other young professionals, a little cocky with teeth too big for their judgmental faces? Maybe a couple of girls on their first real flat who read about flat neighbor etiquette in a magazine?

It’s not what he’s confronted with.

The man before him is far from older. If anything, he’s younger than Louis, with a soft, sweet face framed by long, near shoulder-length brown hair that honestly, truly _shines_ in the low light. He’s probably not a young professional, dressed as he is in a rather loud shirt that’s been left unbuttoned to nearly his navel, exposing a host of black ink on pale skin.

And he’s certainly not a girl, so.

Louis realizes he is definitely, definitely staring.

Luckily, the scrambling to find coherent words to cover for this gross indiscretion is forgotten when he once again drops his phone, which, being already destroyed, serves only to distract the man whose doorway he is (still) silently standing in.

The stranger’s eyes—green, and Louis is reminded, of all things, of a frog he saw at the zoo once—follow the phone to what is apparently its second home, the floor. They sweep back up to Louis’ own eyes, more alert than they have been all day.

“Oops,” the man rumbles. His voice is very deep and slightly contrite, eyeing Louis’ phone before flickering back to his eyes.

“Hi,” Louis manages finally.

Acutely aware of—everything, all of a sudden, Louis extends his hand, but it seems too abrupt an action to him, like an explosion from his torso, so he jerks it back slightly before ultimately thinking better of it.

The man, however, extends his own hand at the precise second Louis takes his away. He drops it to his side, seemingly unsure of how to proceed.

He blinks, green eyes large and owlish.

Louis realizes his own overall effect is of a man whose arm is being controlled by a team of wily monkeys with rope, who is fighting valiantly against his tiny mammalian oppressors to complete a business transaction with a saner _, taller_ person, now with his hand tucked awkwardly into his pocket as he waits for Louis to finish up whatever he’s doing.

Very Charlie Chaplin, Louis thinks. Very vaudeville. He should consider switching career paths.

“I’m Louis. Is uh, is Zayn here? I was told…” Louis trails off as the man nods his head, long curls kissing his face, tickling his neck.

“Yeah, he is,” the man says. They finally manage a handshake. “Harry, by the way. Nice to meet you.” He glances at their joined hands, which prompts Louis to do the same, which means he notices the extended amount of time for which they’ve been clasped.

This whole business of introductions is only meant to take a moment, honestly.

“Shit, sorry about that,” Harry says, kneeling down to pick Louis’ battered mobile off the hallway’s thin hallway carpeting.

Louis shrugs. “No worries,  mate, I dropped it once already today. That’s what did it.”

“Accident prone, then?” Harry asks from his knees, looking up from under absurd lashes, pink lips slightly open.

And Louis kind of blanks, at that.

Which means they lock into another silence, accompanied by another too-long stare.

Which, naturally, is how Zayn finds them.

“Lou!” He stands behind Harry in the doorway, smile wide. “Finally, thought Grimshaw’d killed you.” Zayn then seems to take in the bizarre tableau they make: Harry on his knees with a broken mobile proffered to Louis, who’s standing over him like he’s about to start giving some rather adult orders.

“Have you met Harry?”  is all Zayn says.

“ _Uhhh_ yes, yep,” Louis manages. Harry mutely hands him the phone, their eyes meeting again, and then cranes his neck to stare back at Zayn with his mouth slightly agape. To the boy’s credit, he recovers quickly, jumping to his feet and clearing the way for Zayn to pull Louis into the flat. 

They wind from the kitchen to the living room. Another man is sprawled on the low couch. Louis thinks he looks like a children’s program’s idea of a fireman, all broad shoulders and thick muscle under a white vest and kind, brown eyes. He beams when they enter the room, pushing himself off the couch to shake Louis’ hand.

“Liam, this is my boyfriend Louis,” Zayn says. He’s standing behind Louis with his head tucked into his neck, arm wrapped around his waist. “Lou, meet Liam. He agrees with me on Batman.”

“No!” Louis cries on reflex, even as he shakes Liam’s hand. “ _No_ , there is no way Batman is a truer hero than Spiderman!”

“Not you too,” Harry says, horrified where he leans against the absolutely packed bookshelf. A good sign, Louis thinks appreciatively.  

“Ignore him,” Liam advises. “He likes Superman, so…”

Louis makes a sound somewhere between disbelieving and pitying. “ _Aw._ ”

“ _Anyway,_ ” Harry interjects. Zayn guides Louis and himself down onto the couch, arms still tight around his middle. Louis squeezes his boyfriend’s hand in reassurance. “Zayn said you were still at work when we stopped by to meet you guys earlier. ”

“Yeah, my coworker skipped out on me to,” Louis wiggles his brows, “help a friend.”

Zayn’s lips twitch against Louis’ hair when he fights a smile. “Grimshaw’s got a lot going on, huh?”

“I’m sure it was worth it,” Louis singsongs.

Harry’s brows are pinched inward when his deep voice rumbles out.“Hang on, what’s your coworker’s first name?”

Louis disentangles slightly from his boyfriend, leaning forward to face Harry where he sits in a squashy-looking armchair. “Nick?” he offers, nonplussed.

“Oh,” Harry says. It’s all he says, too. Louis squints a little, tilts his head. Takes in the boy in front of him, pink and fidgety where only a moment ago he’d been relaxed and open. Before he can question him further, though, Liam is answering the door and three pizzas are being brought to the kitchen.

The flat is near identical to Louis and Zayn’s, but it’s spaced differently to accommodate a second bedroom. The kitchen is a bit cozier, though that may have more to do with the endless cooking gadgets that’ve been stuffed into the space. Louis wonders which of the pair is the chef.

“You guys do a lot of cooking?” Zayn asks as he and Louis hover on the edge of the kitchen.

“Hazza does,” Liam answers. He slides the boxes onto the counter, flipping open the first to start dishing.

“It’s a hobby,” Harry confesses from the doorway. “Bit of an obsession, really.”

 _Of course he cooks._ “An obsession but not a career?” Louis asks. He looks up at the boy, squinting a bit against the studio lighting. It filters through Harry’s hair, highlighting the curls in gold.

Harry shrugs, a bashful grin illuminating his face. “I mean, it’s just…it’s not a…I don’t know that I could make a real job of it, you know? It’s not, like…proper and reliable, I suppose.”

“He’s being modest,” Liam says with a shake of his head. “He _should_ be in culinary school.”

“That’s a load of shit,” Harry counters. He reaches past Louis to the cabinets, shirt riding up as he stretches to secure four plates in one of his ridiculous hands.

“It’s not,” Liam stage whispers conspiratorially to Zayn.

Harry’s dimples carve a perfect, mesmerizing crater in his cheek when he smiles.

With some difficulty, Louis looks away.

Liam and Harry are fantastic, it turns out. After dishing up pizza, they return to the living room and—wonder of wonders—Liam’s copy of FIFA. The lads are clever and kind and _fun,_ full of good stories from their childhood (spent together after Liam’s parents moved them from Wolverhampton to some Manchester village Louis’d never heard of) and university (which Liam has foregone and Harry is attending for, of all things, Business), almost all of them featuring each other. It’s all easy conversation and greasy food and video games, laughter and music and beer that seems to appear from nowhere when Louis starts wanting for a fresh one.

It’s the most fun Louis’ had in a while, truthfully.

So it’s with supreme reluctance that he murmurs into Zayn’s ear that he has work early tomorrow.

“No problem,” Zayn replies, eyes never leaving the screen. “ _Leeyum,_ ” he cries, flinging the controller down the couch and bringing both hands to grip at his own hair.

Liam swears from the armchair. “Sorry, sorry, thought I had that one. Harry got lucky.”

“ _Heyyy_ ,” comes a grumble from halfway under the coffee table, where only a pair of coltish legs in painted-on black denim sprawled on the floor are visible. “Rude, Liam. Rude and unnecessary.”

Louis stands. “Well lads, I’ve had a fantastic time, but I’ve got an early day tomorrow so I best be off.” He extends his hand to Zayn, who remains seated. “Z?” he prompts.

“I’ll be along in a bit,” Zayn says. He doesn’t even look up from the game.

“Oh,” Louis says, sleepy expression dropping a fraction. “You want to—”

“Just for a little bit, yeah,” Zayn says, finally looking at Louis. He quirks an automatic smile and squeezes Louis’ hand, left stupidly extended in front of him.

Louis looks Zayn over. His skin’s luminous, a little flushed with laughter and alcohol. His grin is easy. It occurs to Louis that this may be the most fun Zayn’s had in months, too.

He can feel the unease in his belly, the leaden weight of it. He just can’t place why.

“That’s cool,” he says. “See you in bed, then,” he adds in an undertone, unable to help himself.

He’s rewarded (though that hardly feels like the right word) with Zayn’s eyes dimming, subtle as a shift in the clouds. His eyebrows—still sculpted from yesterday’s shoot—pinch.

“Night, Lou,” Liam calls as Louis makes his way to the door. “Text me about that game, yeah? We’ll mop the floor with ‘em.”

“’Course,” Louis returns, smiling sightlessly as he opens the door.

“Lewis!” a deeper voice cries.

Louis’ grin widens. “Harold?”

“…Bye,” comes the distracted-sounding reply.

Louis is still shaking his head when he’s back inside his own flat.

The warm, amused feeling is quick to fade as he prepares for bed.

There’s a reason Louis has never once lived alone. It’s not as if he’d fall apart without Zayn by his side (well, he would, probably, but for different reasons), it’s not like he can’t cook or clean or look after himself. He can take care of himself and then some, a lifetime caring for half a dozen younger siblings proving as much.

He just can’t…be alone.

Somewhere in the quiet space between entering the flat and slipping between the stone blue sheets Zayn picked out, the thoughts begin to make themselves known. They’re a poisonous blend: doubt and insecurity over his work, and Zayn, and the boys across the hall, weirdly, whose excessive loveliness only seems to have made Louis feel worse.

It makes no sense, Louis knows, to worry about those things. His work is something he does brilliantly, and Zayn is the love of his life, and his staying behind with his new friends—their new friends, Louis supposes—means nothing except that his gig tomorrow starts in the afternoon.

Even if he hadn’t looked as carefree as he did on that sofa in ages. Even if his smiles are few and far between lately, bogged down by his certification process and the astoundingly unglamorous life of low-tier modeling. The whole, uninspiring nature of life between the points of deciding to settle down and actually doing it.

Sometimes, Louis thinks the stupid, monotonous realities of life are the most painfully beautiful thing, like cold grey light in the kitchen on a too-early morning.

Right now, they just make his stomach twist.

Louis shifts in the half-empty bed, sliding his arm under the pillow’s cold underside. He hates being alone because there’s the concrete fears and anxieties, the things he can pick at like knots in his mind and solve and lay to rest, and then there’s the simple, potent sensation of something simply being _wrong._

It was there during uni, waiting for his attention on the rare occasion he wasn’t at the center of events.

It was there after the move to London, hiding between the boxes on the bedroom floor that he unpacked while Zayn was singing in the kitchen.

And it’s here now, smothering Louis while he fights for sleep.

Louis hates being alone, but that’s where Zayn’s left him. He tries, _hard,_ not to resent that, and comes up short.

He must doze off, because he’s jostled back into consciousness when Zayn finally slips in next to him, breath tinged with cigarettes and beer.

“Hey babe,” Zayn murmurs into his neck. His lips are cold; Louis imagines the tiny balcony Liam and Harry and Zayn probably crowded onto, sharing jokes and cigarettes and completely oblivious to Louis, mere meters away, drowning under a wave of maddeningly abstract disquiet. He sees their cheeks hollow as they inhale, the sharp angles the flame would cut and the glow it would cast into their eyes.

Louis only gives a soft sound of acknowledgement, rolling over to face Zayn. His compact stature bellies it, but Louis despises being the little spoon. His arms as clumsy as they move to circle Zayn’s waist, pulling his narrow frame into Louis’.

“Time is it?” he breathes out against Zayn’s hair.

“Half three.”

That sits unpleasantly.

“What’d you even _do,_ ” he asks, excusing his petulance as a side-effect of his drowsiness. Dull bass thumps from a car passing outside.

Zayn gives a jerky little half-shrug, still with his face turned into Louis’ shoulder. “Talked, mostly. Harry went to bed around midnight so Liam and I just chatted.”

“For three and a half hours?” and there’s no excusing the annoyance in his tone this time.

His boyfriend seems to agree. “Yeah, Lou. For three and a half hours.”

They’re silent. It’s tense. Louis keeps his eyes firmly shut, relaxing his breathing.

A minute later, Zayn’s voice breaks the darkness of their bedroom. “I’m allowed to have friends other than you.”

“Can we do this later?” Louis asks, but internally he’s already resigned himself to the fight that, really, was inevitable from the moment he saw Zayn’s smile falter back in the other flat when he said goodbye for the night.

“Now is good,” comes the response. Zayn’s accent is soft and lovely, but his tone is harder than it has any right to be.

“I’ve got work early tomorrow, Z, c’mon.”

“You _always_ have work early tomorrow,” Zayn gripes. “Keeps us from having any important conversations, conveniently.”

 _How did this go so off-track?_ Louis wonders. “Fine. Let’s have a conversation, then.”

“Why do you care that I was out late? I was hardly even gone, it was just across the hall,” Zayn says.

Louis shakes his head minutely, a silent dismissal of that point. “Why did you even want to stay? You hardly know those guys.” Zayn isn’t a fucking recluse, by any means, but _reserved_ isn’t too far off the mark. He’s always most comfortable at Louis’ side. It’s unquestionable. It’s just how it is.

Perhaps Louis is more reliant on the status quo than he’d realized, because the venom in Zayn’s next answer catches him wholly off guard. “Because it’s boring to know exactly one person in this whole sodding city.”

Louis snorts. “You know plenty of people—”

“ _In London,_ Louis. People I don’t only put up with because they’re doing my same course or work for the same agency.”

“Pretty nice the first people you can do anything more than _put up with_ are two fit uni blokes, innit?” Louis retorts.

Zayn barks a short laugh. It’s far too harsh in the intimate darkness; Louis flinches away from it slightly, brow furrowed. “That’s what this is? You’re _jealous?_ ”

“See, you’re using that tone,” Louis says, voice unkind and more than a bit patronizing, “but if the situation were reversed you’d be the one pouting.”

“So you admit you’re pouting?” Zayn returns.

“Go fuck yourself, babe,” he hums serenely.

Zayn sighs, long and heavy. Louis rolls his eyes behind their lids.

“Not sure why I bother with you,” Zayn mutters, wiggling to the edge of the bed to escape Louis’ arms. Louis lets him go easily.

“Yeah, well.” Louis doesn’t really have a follow-up, he just always needs the last word on things. “The feeling’s mutual.”

An irritated huff is Zayn’s only reply. They fall asleep not touching.

*** 

It’s Nick’s idea, which Louis should have expected, probably.

“Just do it.”

“I’m not a fucking thirteen-year-old, Nick,” Louis snaps. “You’re not going to convince me to _do blow_ just because it’ll make me one of the cool kids.”

They’re in Nick’s office on Monday, and their latest project kicks off today. So far, Louis has had to present three different tactics for the project’s management,  fighting to prove every detail as valid and necessary to his colleagues as they ripped each plan apart, looking for any weak spots. The process reminds him—has always reminded him—of arguing with his mum as a teenager, begging for a couple extra hours past his curfew or why exactly he needs to go to Leeds Fest with Stan more than anything in the world. It’s a migraine, is what it is. It’s also his job description.

Eleanor the Intern also got coffee on his shirt, which figures.

None of this would be unmanageable if not for the fact that he’s functioning on almost no sleep. After the fight with Zayn, he’d been unable to drift off again. He’d watched the sky turn blue and then grey-white through the window, flipping every now and again to observe his boyfriend’s peaceful face. He thinks he might understand what all those songs mean when they talked about oceans of space between two lovers in their bed.

It’s a melancholy thought, and that plus too little sleep had his mood in the gutter to start with.

And Nick. Nick is not helping.

“It’s not a friendship test, you twat,” Nick says. “Look, it’s not like I’m asking you to snort a line off a stripper’s arse, just—you need a pick-me-up, yeah? Your Yorkshire’s not cutting it, and we have next to no time to get this account squared away. We’re busy people. I need you functional.” Nick crosses his arms, quiff flopping a little when he tilts his head at Louis.

“Functional doesn’t mean high,” Louis argues. He drums his fingers on his desk, the movement reminiscent of a cornered cat flicking its tail. “Tell me why I don’t report you to Simon right now.”

“Because half the people here need a line or two to be anything other than dead on their feet,” Nick points out. “Simon doesn’t care. I don’t think you do, either.”

“That so.” Louis presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose. In any other partnership, _he’s_ the wild card.

“Here, Footie Barbie, is my thought,” Nick says with the air of a conspirator. “You don’t wanna admit that it sounds good, but it does, doesn’t it? Being able to power through the rest of the day instead of suffering through it. They call it marching powder for a reason.”

Louis ignores him, dropping his head to his desk. From outside Nick’s cracked office door—they having this conversation with the doorunlocked, Jesus fuck—he hears the sound of something falling, the dismayed group _Awww_ that follows. Everything is in shambles here. Best in the country or no, if their clients knew what an average day looked like here, they’d be belly-up by (the depressingly early) sunset.

“And you’re suffering _bad,_ ” Nick adds, taking in Louis’ unkempt state. “Look, if you don’t wanna trust me, I can’t make you and I refuse to try. But at least trust historical precedent. Busy people have been using uppers since forever, it’s nothing new. Just a proven, short-term fix.”

“It’s an addictive, _illegal_ narcotic, Nick,” Louis says plaintively. His voices vibrates through the wood of the desk. “You’re not pushing  drugs on me in the workplace.” He closes his eyes, feeling dried out and puffy and bone tired.

“You know what? Fair enough,” Nick says, shrugging once. “Just thought I’d offer. But _do_ get some sleep tonight, yeah?”

And Louis tries, he honestly does, but all he manages that day is a two hour nap on the couch before Zayn comes home, and then everything is tense and miserable as they ignore each other. The tension ratchets up when Zayn says he’s going to go hang out with Liam and Harry.

“I’d invite you, but,” he starts, “I don’t really want to.”

“Your maturity is astounding, as always,” Louis calls down the short hall from the living room that leads to the door. The only answer is a slam.

Zayn hasn’t come back by the time Louis goes to bed, and he feels an achy sort of fatigue over it, unsure of what it means.

So he doesn’t sleep, really, feeling weird despite himself. Louis and Zayn aren’t codependent, they _aren’t,_ but they also don’t do well without each other. Mixed with Zayn’s innate stubbornness and Louis’ ability to hold a grudge indefinitely, it has all the makings of a weeklong fight. As Louis’ mum so dryly puts it, it’s one of their Cold Wars.

Any other time, Louis would bunker down and let it happen, none too fussed as long as Zayn and him end up back in each other’s arms at the end of it.

Except, for that to happen, Zayn has to actually _be_ there.

“Off to see the boys?” Louis asks archly as Zayn grab his wallet and heads for the door the next evening.

Zayn’s got shutters over his eyes, keeping them blank as he meet Louis’ sharp gaze. “Li and I are going to see the new Marvel movie.”

Louis feels a hot flare in his gut at that. “Wonderful. Have fun.”

“I will, actually,” Zayn snaps. Louis’ eyes flick back to his tablet, taking the tense little exchange for over. Instead of a door shutting with a slam or the scarier, deceptive calm Zayn’s so good at, however, he hears Zayn’s long exhale. His gaze flicks back up.

Zayn looks like he’s deliberating on something as he bites at his full bottom lip. Finally, he speaks. “He’s straight, you know.”

If it’s meant to make Louis feel better, it doesn’t. Actually, his head rushes and his veins feel icy and his first, blind instinct is to snap at Zayn, so he does.  “Why the _fuck_ would I care where he puts his dick?”

It’s too harsh. It’s far more than the conversation calls for, too hostile for what is ostensibly a passive-aggressive battle of wills. Louis knows it the second he’s said it.

Zayn does, too.

“Why would you care about anything?” he asks bitterly, and there, finally, is the quiet, foreboding _snick_ of the door.

By Wednesday, Louis is dead on his feet.

Nick gives him a pointed look from across the break room counter before hauling him into the bathroom.

“We can’t— _you_ can’t afford to mess this account up, Tomlinson, c’mon,” he mutters, fumbling for something in an inner pocket.

And the thing is, Louis really can’t. He was late for _everything_ yesterday, forgot a meeting today—things he really _can’t_ afford to do when he’s still so new to the firm, got chosen despite having less experience than anyone else in the candidate pool. If this job was the entire reason he and Zayn moved to London, it’s vital he does what he can to keep it.

It’s everything.

Nick pulls the tiny baggie out from his jacket. The powder looks like flour. Cornstarch.

It’s also the only thing Louis can imagine keeping him on his feet right now.

He’s tried coke before, a couple tiny lines in Stan’s dorm room his sophomore year. All it did was make his nose burn.

“This better do something, or god help you, Grimshaw,” Louis grumbles as Nick arranges the lines neatly on a women’s compact mirror.

Nick smiles, cheeky and lopsided. “It will.”

And it does. It really, really does.

*** 

Their Cold War ends as the work week does, Louis buying a bouquet of lilies and admitting that he was maybe a bit jealous that Zayn’s made a new friend. They have sex against their living room wall in celebration. The sensation of cold wood  against his overheated skin is enough to have Louis shivering into an orgasm within minutes, Zayn following right behind.

After, when Zayn is laying prone on the sofa and Louis is slumped into a stylish minimalist armchair, resting before they go clean up, Zayn mentions that they could easily be Louis’ friends, too, if he wanted.

“Never thought I’d have to encourage you to be more social,” he says, drowsy.

Louis shifts a bit, unsticking the bare skin of his arse from taut black leather. “They’re cool blokes. Work is just…” _Miserable._ “Absurd, right now.”

Zayn purses his lips. He gets up and kisses Louis once on the forehead, padding through their bedroom door to the en suite.

The fuck again before bed, but Louis feels unsettled and weird even as he’s clenching down on Zayn’s cock, riding him through his orgasm. He lays there in the dark, stares at Zayn’s sleeping form for a bit, the pouty calm of his face, before slipping delicately out of the bed and padding into the bathroom.

Louis flips the light on once the door is shut, eyes falling to examine himself in the mirror as he approaches the sink.

He looks like shit, frankly, paled by winter and exhausted. His eating habits have been reprehensible as of late, composed mainly of whatever is close to the office (a Chinese, a pizzeria) and what’s _closest_ to the office (endless snacks from the vending machines). He feels like shit, too, blood buzzing and bones achy, and he knows why.

He knows what will make him feel better.

The powder is almost invisible against the quartz bathroom counter, but it certainly _feels_ like something.

Louis raises his head, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand. Already, his eyes seem brighter, his skin less grey. He looks _good._ He looks ready to _go._ And just like that, Louis knows what he’s going to do with his night.

Zayn is always happier curled around a novel than out and about, so Louis supposes the gorgeous surrounding neighborhood, complete with a park, was more a selling point for _him_ than for _them._ Truly, the flat had been too good to pass up.It’s not Kensington, by any means, but it’s certainly far better than Louis would have thought to imagine five years ago, dirty Toms and floppy hair and no purpose to speak of in a tiny dormitory.

He’d been a drama major, before. He’d wanted to produce stage productions, had been obsessed with the idea and the _craft_ of it since he was twelve and first stepped foot in the Globe Theater on a field trip.

Small, local productions wouldn’t pay for a flat in a neighborhood this lovely, though.

Louis tiptoes to the closet, the smell of leather and smoke stronger where Zayn’s endless row of jackets hangs. He pulls on his wool coat silently, grabbing only his keys before he slips into a decrepit pair of Toms (because some things never change) and bouncing out into the hall.

He’s so ready for the brisk air. He’s ready for the night, dark and cold and his alone _,_ separated from the real world by a dreamy sort of haze. The foggy night is begging to swallow him up, make him no one at all for a moment in this absurd city. Louis is eager to let it.

So he may twitch a bit from sheer irritation when he opens the building’s door and sees someone else already standing there, gazing out at the night and disrupting the illusion.

“What the fuck,” he mutters, jaw muscles jumping as he clenches his fingers compulsively.

The man is staring up at the sky, though Louis can’t imagine why; a quick glance reveals it’s as starless as ever. He’s about to shoulder past him and into the night when he notices the head of long, dark hair that skims the man's shoulders, his ridiculous Tim Burton legs under a long jacket. The man drags a hand through his hair, and for some reason _that,_ the site of those massive hands in dark curls, is what it takes to make things click for Louis.

“Harry?” he calls from the doorway.

The man stiffens briefly in surprise, obviously unused to having his late night non-stargazing interrupted, if that’s what this is. He turns to Louis. Smiles. The set of his face is friendly, if not a little taken aback.

Louis smiles too, a bit wolfishly. ”Alright, mate?”

“What’re you doing up?” Harry asks, pirouetting to fully face Louis. He looks classic and untouchable, the late October chill softening out the lamppost’s glow behind him to create an almost-halo. Louis can pick the lighter shades out of his dark hair, caramel in sweeps of chocolate. A scarf hangs loose around his neck, unwound. There’s a sliver of skin exposed below his open coat and unbuttoned shirt, hints of tattoos visible under his collarbones.

Ridiculous.  

Louis kind of wants to bite them. He wants to ask what the two birds mean, take Harry in from the cold and trace his fingers over every line and word and back bedroom doodle on his body. He wants to trace them with his tongue, with his _teeth,_ destroy Harry’s methodical way of speaking and leave him shaking on a mattress. On the floor. Everywhere.

It takes a second for Louis to process that there was a question posed to him. He feels his cheeks rushing with heat, and it’s all too much. Too much to have this intoxicatingly attractive man drawing closer on top of the uppers in his system.

If questioned, Louis will plead temporary insanity and leave it at that.

“Wanted to take…” he starts on a low drawl as Harry stands within touching distance. He grabs the boy’s scarf, Harry’s green eyes widening in pleasant confusion. “A bit of a walk,” he finishes, and pulls hard, taking off with the scarf.

 He’s halfway down the block, starting to get nervous that Harry’s gonna think he’s a weirdo, before he hears the incredulous _Hey!_ and the sound of thundering footsteps behind him. The air whips past him as he jumps down the steps and into the frigid night, glad that it’s not yet started to frost so that the ground is dry enough to dig into, to let him really make it a challenge.

It takes a satisfyingly long amount of time for Harry to catch up to him. Louis knows he’s been made when the ground is suddenly approaching must faster and a Harry-sized buffalo is tackling him into the grass.

 “The fuck was that?” the boy asks, his laughter mellowing into a pleasant smile hovering above Louis.

“Told you,” Louis says. “Fancied a bit of a stroll.”

“Fair enough,” Harry says, nodding like it makes sense. His cheeks are pinked from wind and exertion, his eyes bright. “Let me help you with that,” he offers.

He’s an intoxicant, he has to be. Louis feels nearly sick with it. Though that may have to do with the way he’s still halfway on top of Louis.

_Too much, too much, too much._

It’s then that Harry grabs his scarf back, taking off down the block with the end of it trailing behind him in invitation.

 “ _No!_ ” Louis laughs, manic, jumping up to give chase.

It devolves from there. The streets echo with their scuffling feet and curses, laughter interspersed with Louis’ indignant squawks and Harry’s protests when Louis has him pinned, tickling under his arms mercilessly.

They find themselves sitting on the kerb a street down from the flat block, catching their breath and enjoying the cool air on their exertion-flushed skin. Louis sheds his coat, was already too hot under the collar before their game of tag.

“You take walks at night often, then?” Harry asks. “I’ve never seen you out.”

“It’s a new thing,” Louis admits. “You looked like you were comfortable, though. Proper poetic.”

“Not especially,” Harry says, with a modest head shake. Louis is dizzy-high from giggling and the comedown from the earlier line, so he may be imagining the flush that stains Harry’s cheeks. “I usually stick to the pool. Liam turned me onto it. He, like, so he was on the Olympic reserves when we were younger, right? Taught me to swim, actually.” Harry clears his throat, reigning in his rambling. “Felt like a walk tonight, though.”

Louis lets out an impressed exhale over the tidbit on Liam, before remembering he’s annoyed with Liam for his broad shoulders and warm eyes and the way he’s completely charmed Zayn, straight or not. “Z and him really hit it off,” he says.

It’s so clearly the wrong thing to say, but Louis can’t pinpoint _why._ In any case, the air seems suddenly cooler and Harry’s smile slips a fraction, which Louis supposes he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been outright staring at the man’s lips.

He’s just—he’s indecently beautiful, and Louis _knows_ about indecent beauty. He’s bedding Zayn Malik, for fuck’s sake.

But with his long hair, curling against his neck and jawline, with his marble statue bone structure and ridiculous tattoos and eyes far too luminous for how late it is, for how tired he _must_ be, already up when Louis showed up nearly an hour ago, Harry is—

“Stunning.”

Harry blinks. “Pardon?”

It takes far, far longer than it should for Louis to realize what’s occurred.

“Not—uh, it’sssss….” He trails off awkwardly, wishes to take off down the block again. “Just. Stunning you haven’t yelled at me for barging into your night and. Taking your scarf, and. That.”

Harry only smiles, sweet and bemused, and Louis shakes himself mentally. _Not on, Tommo, definitely_ _not on._ “Still got a walk, didn’t I? And company besides.”

“Is that something you wanted, then?” Louis asks, too quickly.

“Uh, well, I didn’t expect it or anything, but…yeah.”

And there's this moment, is the thing, where Harry’s smiling at Louis and Louis’ smiling at him and Louis is suddenly remembering a different boy in a different year.

_“This is when you kiss me,” Louis whispers conspiratorially, leaning in a bit to drive the point home._

_“I was getting to it,” Zayn mumbles, but obliges, hand on the back of Louis’ head and plush lips soft, soft, soft._

“I should probably—” Harry begins, standing a bit unsteadily.

Louis scrambles to join him. “Yeah, uh—I’ve got work in the morning, so.”

The younger man’s face scrunches. “Tomorrow’s Saturday, Lou.”

The nickname hits Louis in the throat, forcing him to clear it before he can speak again. “Yeah, I—my schedule’s pretty hectic.”

They walk back together, near silent in the elevator except for a few quippy comments. Louis still feels like he could run a marathon, but probably he’ll just do another line or two and get a jumpstart on his work day once he’s changed.

They’ve fallen into an easy silence—rare for Louis—when they reach their respective doors.

“Louis?”

There’s uncertainty in Harry’s voice. _This is when you kiss me,_ Louis remembers. He closes his eyes tight, back turned to Harry before he answers. “Yeah, mate?”

“Do you…like, night walks...are you planning on doing that often?” Harry asks.

And, well. No, he probably wasn’t.

“Could do,” he says quietly. He stares at the white numbers on his door, tracing the four and zero and five with his eyes as he waits for an answer.

It takes ages, too.

 “Same time tomorrow, then?”

In spite of the comedown from the coke, Louis feels his lips turn upward into a tired smile.

“Alright.”

The smile refuses to vacate after they say their goodbyes and Louis clicks the door shut behind him. It stays plastered across his face as he toes his shoes off and shows no sign of wavering while he pads through the flat.

It falls rather quickly when he passes through the living room.

Zayn is waiting in the dark like some kind of cliché. Even without light, Louis can see his lips twisted into a scowl, the accusation sparking in his eyes.

There’s a moment where Louis does nothing but stand with his hands hanging uselessly by his sides, silent and still flushed from exertion as he watches Zayn take him in. He can hear the refrigerator click over and hum.

Zayn finally speaks. “What the fuck, Lou.”

There are worlds between how Harry had used the nickname and Zayn’s angry, slow-burn inflection now.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Louis says, voice flat.

“You never _sleep,_ anymore.”

“Yeah, well, I was trying to do something about that,” he snaps. “What does it _matter,_ Zayn?”

“Do you have any idea how hurtful it is to wake up in the middle of the night to you leaving?” the other man says, and oh, dear. Now that his eyes have adjusted, he can see Zayn’s thick lashes are a bit spidery with dampness.

“Just went for a walk, love,” he says softly. He approaches Zayn, curled up in the armchair, arms wrapped around himself, with careful steps. He straddles him in the chair, pulling him into his arms from Louis’ position in his lap.

“You never tell me stuff, y’know?” Zayn mumbles into Louis’ shoulder.

“It’s not your problem,” Louis responds, stung. It’s not a new fight—none of them are, anymore—but it still chafes to hear that Zayn thinks he’s holding back anything at all. His whole life for years has been in service of their relationship, building them lives that will _mean_ something.

“It’s my problem when you start disappearing in the middle of the night,” Zayn says, gaze a challenge.

Louis bristles, tightening his fingers in Zayn’s hair a fraction. “I’m an adult person, Zayn. It was a _walk._ ”

“Who with?”

It takes Louis a second.

“Wait, is _that_ what this is about? You heard me talking to Harry in the hall—”

“Why were you and Harry—”

“He couldn’t sleep either, apparently,” Louis says, eyes narrowed. “Zayn. Why are you acting like this?”

In that way that’s disturbing for a man so slight, Zayn lifts Louis off of him, more or less shoving him into an uncoordinated heap on the floor before standing. He’s in a white tee and his pajama bottoms, the red plaid ones that’re pilling a bit from going through the wash so many times.

He doesn’t answer Louis’ question.

“That wasn’t rhetorical,” Louis says, a bit nastier. “I asked you _why you’re acting like a jealous bint._ ”

Zayn deflates, shoulders falling as he stands in the doorway of the dark bedroom. “Nothing. Just. Tell me next time, yeah?”

The bedroom door closes, muffling Louis’ quiet _yeah._

_***_

It becomes a thing. All of it. It seems like a cycle Louis should do nothing to encourage, but it feels good, and it’s working, and it _feels good._

He spends his days slogging through ever-increasingly soul-numbing material at work, sent into a silent, suffocating panic when his boss Simon tells him he’s being considered for a promotion—an objectively wonderful opportunity—and that he’s interested to see how Louis handles the added workload.

Nick starts charging for the coke, and Louis gladly pays. He can afford it. He can more than afford it.

After a few weeks, he begins to feel like he can afford anything. Zayn still shoots him unhappy looks when he comes in at nearly dawn and falls into bed, but Louis sees no reason to pay him any mind. Louis can’t help the way the walks with Harry—sometimes to all-night diners, sometimes just around the block, always with conversation—leave him giggly and…oddly sated. Settled.

Zayn spends what is truly an obscene amount of time at Harry and Liam’s, and although Louis will usually join him, he doesn’t particularly like the odd amount of distance it creates between them.

The thing is, Louis and Zayn’s relationship blossomed in a vacuum. So many of their interactions were isolated, away from their separate friend groups and the world at large, all sex marathons in cramped bedrooms and movie dates where the extent of their interaction was a purposeful hand pressing into Louis’ dick through the entirety of the film.

They don’t know how to be Zayn&Louis anywhere but alone.

There’s also the increasingly obvious _lack_ of distance between Louis and Harry that’s forming. The jokes they crack are inside jokes. The smiles they wear are aimed at each other. It’s dreadful, really, because Louis sees it. He sees that Zayn sees it, though he hardly has room to talk with the irritating way he hangs on Liam’s every word (another problem with their group hangouts: Liam is so _good,_ so purely and obviously good--he saves people from burning buildings, for fuck's sake--that it makes Louis’ insides twist with admiration and jealousy and guilt).

And it’s also very weird, bonding with Harry over the smell of the cold night and the scuffling sounds of their feet on the street they walk down the middle of, darting out of it with giggles and contrite waves when a car passes. It’s weird, getting to know someone through the way they walk backwards on gangly, lovely legs, and the comments they make in passing about their life.

“So, young Harold,” Louis says, voice ringing like a gunshot in the crisp air. It’s late November and he’s dangling a foot off the monkey bars in the empty playground they’ve found a few blocks off the flat. Harry, on the ground, predictably tries to wrap his fingers around Louis’ ankle, pull him down. Louis jerks away, smiling. “Why study business?”

Harry’s breath comes out in puffs. “It’s a good fit.” He shrugs, pulling his jacket tighter. “It’s fun enough.”

“No, it’s not,” Louis says with a shake of his head.

“Is so.”

“You’re a shit liar,” Louis says kindly.

Harry huffs, exaggerating a pout. Louis’ mouth feels dry.

It’s random, but. For a second, the streetlight hits Harry right in his giant ridiculous frog-green eyes and makes his thick lashes seem _that_ much darker, _that_ much fuller. The tinge of pink in his cheeks from the bitter chill matches the pink of his lips, and.

Stricken. Louis is stricken by the completely commonplace picture, the pinks and greens of it set in an orange cast, the black of Harry’s pea coat in his bottom peripheral.

It’s very, very weird, undoubtedly, balancing the way he always feels  too-hot and flustered when Harry and him touch, arms wrapped around torsos to pull each other to the ground or shoulders knocking as they amble down the street.

But it’s good. 

Louis settles with his bum on the fat side rail of the monkey bars as Harry continues.

“Business is like…” Harry shrugs, head tilting in kittenish contemplation. He’s standing at full height since Louis is so far off the ground, back straight and shoulders obnoxiously broad. Louis does _not_ have a fixation on how tall Harry is. He does not. “Stable, I guess. I want to…” He trails off, eyes a little distant.

“Styles,” Louis prompts gently when it’s clear Harry’s unsure whether to continue. This kid and his trailing off, _honestly._  But there’s a hesitance in his eyes that makes Louis want to be softer, reign in his pushiness. “You can tell me.”

“I wanna be a good provider, I guess,” Harry says, pulling his bottom lip between his fingers, distorting his confession. “Kind of silly to be thinking of right now, I suppose, but…yeah. That’s why I chose it.”

Louis smiles, dangling foot swinging back and forth in the cold air. “A good provider. You want kids, then?”

Harry’s expression simultaneously lights up and melts. Louis’ heart lurches in response.

 “I’ve always wanted kids,” Harry admits shyly. “I was the baby of the family—”

“Right, your sister,” Louis recalls.

“Yeah, yes. Uh, but I never _felt_ like the baby. I’ve always loved…taking care of people, I guess. Children especially,” Harry finishes.

Louis circles his neck on his shoulders, trying to dispel the tightness that seems to follow an hour or so after he snorts a line. Or three. “And you don’t think you could do that with a culinary degree, is that it?”

“Well—I mean, it’s a very competitive field, Lou,” Harry says, like the problem is obvious.

And it is, but it isn’t, because Louis has yet to find a reason why Harry Styles shouldn’t be able to accomplish anything he sets his mind to. He’s brilliant, for one, clever as hell with a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of food and music. He told Louis that one summer, he challenged himself to learn a language; the venture ended with him able to sign with the deaf neighbor girl, Eloise. He also sings like a fucking angel, which Louis learned to his own detriment when he showed up earlier than usual one night for their walk and caught the steady, lilting notes of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

Louis shrugs. “I think you could make it.”

“What _are_ the correct reasons to go into business , then? Let’s say, I dunno, Public Relations, for example,” Harry drawls out.

It takes a second for what’s being implied to catch up with Louis’ addled thoughts. “I…it’s a good fit for _me_ ,” he says. He recognizes how weak it sounds the second it’s out of his mouth. “I’m not brilliant like you.”

“False, objectively false,” Harry retorts. He blows into his hands, rubbing them together for warmth, the hollowing of his cheeks as he breathes out through shivery lips making Louis twitch. (Zayn and him haven’t fucked in _weeks,_ it feels, at least not in the proper, spine-melting way he wants. Louis tries to feel bad for how much he’s gagging for it. Fails.) “You’ve no right to advise me against doing exactly as you have.”

“It’s different, though, it’s different,” Louis says, meaning it.

Harry gives up on warming his hands, instead stuffing them into his coat pockets. “How’s it different, Lou?” he asks, voice solemn as he stares up through those awful fucking sex lashes.

Louis hesitates.

Over the last few weeks, Louis’ realized it’s far, far harder to lock his thoughts up with Harry than it is to just share them. They always sound so stark in the night, against the backdrop of empty city streets and uneven lamp light, but Harry takes it all in stride.

“I did it because I wanted to. The provider thing--being a good provider--it’s not really a matter of that, for me,” he says quietly. He fixes his eyes on the playground’s rickety merry-go-round. “Z, uh. He doesn’t want kids, really, so.”

Harry gasps like he’s been stabbed. “But that little girl at the restaurant the other night, you were both cooing over her.”

Louis’ nose wrinkles, eyes crinkling up with his smile. “Haz, you duffer, that was _us._ ”

“Oh.” Harry exhales, long and low. “Right.”

“Yeah,” Louis says. He’s not having fun right now, he realizes, and the part of his brain that craves white powder and activity is throwing a tantrum over that. He’s not _not_ having fun, either, the larger part of his mind reasons.

This just. Feels like more than their usual conversations.

“Louis,” Harry starts carefully, “you told me you’ve always wanted kids, like, a week ago.”

“I do,” he admits, voice brittle and small. He lets himself be distracted momentarily by a light coming on in a flat across the way, too far for him to distinguish much but the vague suggestions of someone else in the city as sleepless as the pair of them.

“Have you two talked about it?” Harry asks. It feels tentative, but there’s suddenly a large hand on Louis’ knee, a thumb rubbing firm circles into his leg. The pressure’s too exquisite to _not_ melt into.

“We have,” he says quietly. He rests his hands on the monkey bars behind where he dangles, tilting his head back and closing his eyes against the glare of the streetlamps.

“And what did you…?” Harry’s voice is nothing but a quiet rumble as he works his hand more firmly into Louis’ calf. Louis exhales, half in pleasure and half in something like resigned sorrow. The noise is met with a second hand joining the first, Harry tugging at Louis gently until he tilts forward and off the monkey bars. He lands on his feet to Harry’s right, head down to avoid meeting the pitying gaze.

Louis doesn’t expect Harry to move behind him, ratchet up his pulse with that simple action, and then do further damage by taking the same big hands that had been making slow shapes on his leg and pushing them into the tense muscles at the back of his neck, the juncture of his spine and shoulders. Louis shivers with it. Writes it off as the sharp cold.

“When I was ten days old,” Louis starts, tone conversational, “my father left my mum.”

It’s not anything Harry doesn’t already know, even if it’s never been put so starkly. He’s patient as he works into the knots in Louis’ shoulders with the heel of his hand, waiting for Louis to find the words.

“I know what happens when a child is forced on someone who doesn’t want to be in the picture,” Louis says, hating his voice for the way it breaks. “I could never do that to my children. _Never._ I’d rather—” he stops, but the gentle pressure on his spine does not. An inhale, and he finishes, “I’d rather never be given the opportunity than watch that happen.”

Harry says nothing. Louis’ pushed it too far, then, gotten too melancholy, revealed too much unseemly detail about his and Zayn’s relationship. The flaws in the careful plan he’s spent years creating. The fading shine of perfection where, it’s becoming depressingly apparent, it doesn’t exist. He’s scared off the lanky, lovely boy, he’s sure.

Instead of confirming any of this, Harry’s hands stop moving and slowly, cautiously begin to wrap around Louis, pulling him into a hug that leaves them pressed back-to-chest.

“’M sorry, Lou,” he murmurs in the space above Louis’ shoulder.

“Don’t be,” Louis says, flushing like the idiot who can’t accept _completely platonic affection_ that he definitely, totally is.

“You deserve to have the things you want,” Harry continues, tone soothing. _Entrancing,_ Louis’ brain supplies. “You deserve to have a family.”

“Maybe,” Louis argues half-heartedly, subdued by the body heat radiating out from Harry’s torso through Louis’ entire being.

“Without question,” Harry returns. The contrary little shit.

They stay like that for a while, only disentangling when Louis notices his toes starting to go numb. They part that night with quiet smiles, Harry’s eyes glowing as he says a soft _sleep well._

Louis tries, crawling in beside Zayn (who has resigned himself to annoyed grumbling when Louis wakes him up after his late-night walks, lately) to see his and Harry’s impromptu cuddle as a betrayal of Zayn’s trust. Tries to contextualize it in that way.

He fails to do so before sleep takes him.

*** 

“Footie Barbie.”

“ _Grimmy,_ ” Louis returns with all the sugary sarcasm he can muster. It’s a lot. Nick smirks to acknowledge the effort. They have an understanding, Grimshaw and he. “What can I help you with? As you can see, I’m about to be die.”

Louis feels as though he’s in danger of being buried in an avalanche of the stacks of paper on his desk, feels ridiculous peeking out from behind a pile of chaos to watch Grimshaw in his office doorway.

“Wouldn’t want that,” Grimshaw says, moseying forward. “Are you out already?” he asks in a lower tone.

Louis’ heart speeds up just talking about it, rabbity little thumps. He shoots a furtive look through the door before glaring hard at Nick, who takes the hint and smoothly shuts it.

“ _No,_ you bellend, I’m not out already,” he hisses. “I’m not a fucking _junky,_ and the bag you sold me was _massive._ ”

“Right, well, you’re looking a bit…” Grimshaw gestures to his own face with one fluttering hand. “Peaky.”

Louis shrugs. “Stressed. Boyfriend troubles. You know.”

“I’ve a cure for that,” Nick says, offhand about it. Louis examines his hot pink cufflinks, flashy against his navy blazer. _Damn him, he’s stylish,_ Louis thinks with familiar, grudging admiration.

After another moment of Nick’s nonchalant silence, Louis slams his hands down on the desk. Nick looks up slowly.

“…Do tell,” Louis prompts with his sunniest smile.

“Party for the hols at my flat tomorrow night,” Nick tells him. “You’re obviously going to be there.”

“Obviously,” Louis says, tone almost fond and thus falling short of truly sardonic.

“Bring your boy. Nothing like Christmas cheer to bring the merry out in us all.” Nick puts his hand to his chest, eyes fluttering.

Louis snorts. “Maybe. He’s been so _busy._ ” But that sounds dangerously like whining. He corrects himself, contemplative. _“_ So have I, but. You know. ‘S different.”

Nick hums his disagreement, still hovering an awkward distance between the desk and the door. Grimshaw’s actually a fairly big fan of Zayn, Louis remembers. He tries to recall if the two ever swapped numbers, if they might be keeping in contact. What they might be saying. “How’s him being busy different than you being busy?” Nick asks.

_Modeling isn’t a real job._

Louis nearly spooks like a horse at the thought, quiet and poisonous. But he thought it, didn’t he? Reflexively. Instead of turning it over in his head at this very moment, though, Louis shrugs, pulling a face.

“He probably won’t come,” he says.

“Well,” Nick lets his gaze drift back from his reflection in the window behind the desk to Louis. “See that you make an appearance, if you can.”

“Of course. Is that all you wanted? Because…” Louis gestures grandly at his desk. “I’m rather in the middle of something.”

“That’ll do,” Nick says, slinking back to the door. “The Halvorson account is being passed over to you tomorrow, by the way. Let me know if you need a little more pep.”

“Bye, Nick.” Louis doesn’t bother looking up again, laser focused on the task at hand, fingers tapping incessantly into his thigh.

 

He’d really only intended to manage Nick’s expectations—he, like everyone, gets a bit fixated when Zayn’s around—but Louis finds that he was depressingly correct in assuming his boyfriend wouldn’t want to show at Nick’s party.

“It’s short fucking notice, Lou, in case that escaped your attention,” he grumbles, hair in disarray from his nap and vest askew as he shuffles through the kitchen that evening. The kiss tattoo Louis hates is peaking out over the top of the shirt, bright red and garish.

“A day’s notice is pretty good for Nick, really,” Louis muses, perched on a barstool. “C’mon, what were you going to do instead?”

“I don’t want to go out.” Zayn pops open the peanut butter, clumsily grabbing for a butter knife.

“Surprising,” Louis says with measured scorn, spinning on the stool before gracefully bouncing to his feet and walking away before he can hear the equally venomous retort.

So alone it is. That night, he nearly asks Harry if he wants to join him. It’s not like they’re bound exclusively to these jaunts, anyway, they all live in each other’s pockets practically, so it shouldn’t feel like it means something to ask Harry to come to a party with him. It shouldn’t feel like anything at all.

Still, he says nothing, enjoying Harry’s blithe smile and the easy rhythm of conversation.

Louis’ initial thought is to wear his bright red trousers to the party. He resists the urge to scrub at his dry nose while he examines himself in the mirror, instead focusing on the excess fabric where once there was none.

It was nearly a decade ago that Louis Tomlinson came to peace with his curves. All his feminine angles had stopped seeming like such an embarrassment of genetics when they started helping him pull, after all, and he’s built an impressive wardrobe around that very idea.

The trousers are loose now around his hips and thighs, turning baggy and unflattering instead of tight and “frankly unfair,” as Zayn had put it years ago, the night of his and Louis’ second date.

Louis checks from all angles. He’s not _less_ curvy, per se, but he’s definitely…leaner. Skinnier than he’s ever been, though not in a bad way. Just different enough to be as inconvenient as it is pleasant, really.

“Well _that’s_ awful,” he mutters to himself, giving the trousers a despairing glance as he tosses them aside, careless. He settles on black skinnies that are usually tight enough to be a cause for public indecency charges and now sit _just_ this side of ultra-tight. A low-necked red tee and a piecey fringe, and Louis feels good to go. It’s never prudent to over-prepare for Nick’s parties, messy affairs that they are. Once, Louis had taken an hour to style his hair into a careful swirled quiff, only to end up with potting soil all through it by night’s end.

He sees Zayn in the living room as he’s preparing to walk out the door, looking around for his keys. He tamps down the hot flare of annoyance the sight of Zayn entrenched in his armchair and blankets sends through him.

“I’m off,” Louis says.

Zayn grunts, eyes never straying from the pages of his book. “Loveyouhavefun,” he mumbles from rote in a monotone.

Louis pauses, huffs out a disbelieving breath. He stares at Zayn for a long moment—which goes ignored, intentionally or no—before leaving, the door closing behind him none too gently. The second it shuts, he pictures the scene inside: Zayn lifting his face from his book only long enough to determine that Louis is pissed over something, that Zayn doesn’t care enough to rectify the situation, before returning to its pages.

Nick’s flat is packed when he gets there, unsurprisingly. There’s some hipster cover of a Christmas standard playing loudly, the trays of baked goods outnumbered only by the bottles of liquors and sparkling wines littered throughout the space.

Louis came high, ducking into the building lobby’s bathroom to load up before heading back out, so he’s feeling pretty confident about—everything, really, from his selection of baked goods (an anatomically correct gingerbread man) to his choice of drink (he’s a sucker for champagne, truly).

Grimshaw shows himself at some point after the first hour and a half, an exemplary host in his hideous Christmas jumper with an elf hat charmingly off-kilter.

“Barbie!” he calls through the crowd, face liquor-bright like the lights twinkling in every doorway.

Louis turns from his conversation with a pixie-like DJ—Grimshaw invites next to no one from the office, Louis supposes he should feel special—to embrace the man. Rather, _brace_ him, as it appears he’s much drunker than Louis expected.

“Alright, Grim?” Louis asks, clapping him on the back and trying not to stumble into the vintage jukebox that has plates of biscuits balanced on it.

“Never better, babe. You _have_ to try this shit.”

Nick’s smile is an increment too wide, his pupils blown. He looks like he’s having a fucking blast. “Your hookup’s here?” Louis asks in an undertone. He’s been content to use Nick as the middle man for the coke for a couple months, but it struck him recently that Nick is in all likelihood price gouging him to punish him for his unwillingness to go to the source himself and spare Nick the trouble.

“Horan? Yeah, he’s around, you should _really_ meet him. Like really. He’s _fucking amazing,_ ” Nick babbles, all chemical excitement.

The friendly DJ pixie is long gone from beside the jukebox. Louis can see no reason to decline.

He kind of wants one, though. Going to Nick for his drugs isn’t just an advanced form of laziness on Louis’ part. As long as there’s a buffer—as long as it only takes as much effort as going to the vending machine to accomplish—it isn’t Louis Doing Drugs. It’s Louis Excelling In the Workplace, and no one can fault him for that.

Nick leads him back through the kitchen (as crowded as the rest of the party, though stickier) and down a hallway to what is, judging by its sparseness and catalogue-ready appearance, a guest bedroom. The whole time, Louis chews at his lip, a habit he swears he picked up from Harry somewhere along the line.

Accepting that there is a man somewhere—dirty trench coat or stained, too-big trousers or whatever—who profits from Louis means accepting that his…methods…of working _beyond_ full productivity aren’t sanctioned.

Cocaine isn’t legal, after all, even if Louis can no longer fully remember why that might be.

But Louis draws poor mental pictures, it seems. If he expects the dealer to be a greasy chav in a hoodie, composed of twitchy movements and side-eye, he’s taken off guard entirely by the ball of sunshine that greets them in the room.

“Good to meet you, I’m Niall Horan,” the kid says with an Irish lilt, hopping up from the bed like he’d been waiting. Probably, Nick’s seemingly random train of thought had been less random than Louis picked up on.

Probably, this is where Louis’ been headed all night.

Niall shakes Louis’ hand with absurd enthusiasm, grasping their clasped hands to his chest momentarily in a way that’s somehow endearing . He looks like a scruffy, well-intentioned uni boy—probably is, actually. He could be one of Harry’s friends that hangs around his and Liam’s flat on occasion, cracking jokes and beers and wind, amiable to any plan as long as weed is involved to some degree.

Just a lad, then. Louis breathes a bit easier, feeling the edge of paranoia subside.

“Likewise. You sling good product, man,” Louis says. He matches Niall’s eagerness inch for inch.

Niall laughs, grinning and nodding  vigorously. “Grimmy told me you were a fan.”

“Well hell, I’m not saying I owe you my job, but…” Niall and Nick laugh like it’s hilarious. Louis suspects it might not be, but the champagne and remnants of his last dose are still sparking his blood, so it _must_ be hilarious, because everything is.

“Sounds like you’ll want to try this, then.” Niall produces a small, black-lacquer case from…somewhere, Louis doesn’t catch it. He’s too enamored by the sheen of the wood, the forbidding promise of it. He can feel his skin prickle from the mere suggestion of what’s inside.

Nick and Louis hover as Niall fumbles a necklace out from under his shirt, revealing a tiny brass key on a chain. He twists it into the elegant lock of the case, rotating until a _snick_ sounds. The sound is objectively tiny, Louis knows, a miniscule component in the cacophony of laughter and music and general party, but it echoes through his brain, through the still air of the isolated room.

“Ladies and gents, may I present for your consideration this evening…”  Niall says, voice gone over all game show announcer. He clicks the box open, the lid moving soundlessly on its hinges. “Some quality fucking snow.”

It’s breathtaking, is the thing. Sometimes Louis feels like his life is so full of beauty that he could jump off a building.

The interior of the box is black velvet, making the white of the filled vials nestled into its pillowed surface that much more searing.

“Why the little bottles?” Nick asks. Louis was wondering, as well, but he’s still rendered speechless by the _presentation_ of it all.

“Product this good doesn’t belong in a plastic baggie,” Niall crows. He looks at the vials reverently, slipping one out of its groove in the cushion.  “Plus it’s a nod to the old-school, y’know. They used to use this stuff as medicine, early 1900’s.”

“Charming,” Nick says, caressing one of the bottles. Louis wonders if the box _actually_ has light radiating from it, or if that’s just his imagination. “Medicine for what?”

“Tooth aches, migraines, gangrene—I don’t know, man. Do you want some or not?” Niall brandishes the vial in his hand, waving it teasingly in front of them.

“How much?” Nick asks.

Just like that, Niall hands the smallest vial to him. “Happy Christmas, mate.”

Nick laughs like he expected this exact outcome. Louis reassess; if Niall can afford to give out what he's made clear if his best product, he must be making a decent amount off of the rest of it. “Cheers, Niall Horan. Can I share with Barbie here?”

Niall is momentarily thrown by the nickname, but he nods affably all the same. “Just hit me up directly when you want more, yeah?” he tells Louis. “This isn’t shit I want spread about.”

“Pure as the driven snow, is it?” Louis snarks, still enraptured by the near-iridescent powder in its pretty, crystal-clear bottle.

Niall’s grin is sunshine and puppies, if the sun was hurtling toward the earth and the puppies were purebred Rottweilers. “That’s the idea.”

*** 

Nick is smooth as an oil slick when he directs two guests who are entangled in the bathroom to make other accommodations. The pair give Louis and Nick suggestive looks as they duck out; Louis resists the urge to smack the man about the head. It’s a weirdly vicious urge, but he can feel the comedown from the last time he took a moment, the fatigue and despondency beginning to press in on his good time. He’s not looking to feel the full effects before he’s back up.

And he won’t have to, because he’s about to experience the purest shit he’s ever seen. It’s mouthwatering, is what it is. Louis is so fucking excited he can’t keep himself still.

To his credit, Nick has a handful of neat, precise lines good to go within moments. He snorts the first couple, aided by a five pound note that has clearly been used for this purpose before.

“Ohhhh heaven help me, yes, alright alright, _yes,_ ” he chants, pupils glittering like dimes.

“Good, then?” Louis says. His gaze flickers between the two remaining lines and Nick, blissful beside him.

“You’ve no fucking clue, mate,” Nick says, before unceremoniously grabbing Louis by the back of the head and pushing is face down near the tray.

Louis doesn’t need any further invitation. The powder is so fine, so pure, it’s nearly bitingly cold in his nose.

“Snow,” he murmurs, the word dissolving into a sepulchral cackle as the joke hits him.

It never stops hitting him, is the thing. He feels like he laughs forever. It’s easily the best high of his life, sharp and clean, devastating and perfect. Long after the sound of his laugh fades, he feels the spasm in his gut, the acute little inhales of breath as he flies.

Up in the air, there are fewer obstacles, so it’s extra disorienting when he hits one in the form of his own name being spoken, deep and slow.

“Louis? What…?”

He wheels toward the door—the _door_ they’ve stupidly _left open,_ which had seemed far less important seconds ago when Louis had assumed the worst it would let in was party sounds.

It seems important now.

“Hazza, hey!” Nick says, voice affable but hands scrambling furiously to obscure the view from the door of the white ceramic sink, where the lovely, tiny vial and Nick’s gaudy compact mirror sit, rolled fiver completing the picture. “Glad you could make it on such short notice, pop star!”

Nick is talking nonsense, Louis thinks. Nick has finally snorted his brains out, because Harry isn’t a pop star, and there’s no way Nick knows Harry. Or else Harry walked into the wrong party.

So busy is Louis trying to reconcile this collision of universes ( _Nick knows Harry Nick knows Harry Harry is here in Nick’s flat and they know each other have known each other possibly forever_ ) he nearly forgets what’s happening right in front of him, the train wreck of this moment.

“Louis?” Harry asks again, voice far too small to have any business with the boy. And it’s a distinction Louis doesn’t often know how to make, because Harry’s 21 and obviously an adult, but he’s also sweet and bright and still in uni, for fuck’s sake, on his first apartment outside his school’s dormitory with the aid of his stepdad's money. And he looks like a _boy_ in that moment, a kid with his mouth down-turned in confusion, eyes wide and growing more saddened by the second.

“Harry, I—uhm. You know Nick?” Louis can’t help but ask. Harry’s eyebrows begin to knit. It’s disgusting how quickly Louis catalogs him, expression, clothes, hair style—a deep side part, he looks like a proper heartthrob, all told—even the way he plays with his ring finger when uncertain of something.

Louis swears that he could pick out Harry’s _breathing pattern_ , at this point. With Niall’s snow running through him, he thinks he might be able to hear the steady thrum of it.

Might be able to hear it break.

“Oh, you know Harry?” Nick seems to have recovered from Harry's sudden appearance, is now standing in front of their setup primly. “Him and I are sort of doing a whole nonexclusive thing right now. Babe, you could’ve _mentioned._ ” It’s unclear who the pet name is meant for, which seems deeply unpleasant to Louis just now. Almost worse than Harry seeing—

“I didn’t know you knew each other,” Louis says. Then, for Harry alone, “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Someone jostles Harry on their way down the hall. He barely budges, eyes riveted to Louis’. He looks gutted.

For a second, Louis is sure he didn’t see, is right now trying to make sense of the images of Louis hovering over a sink with Nick Grimshaw, currency held to his nose and eyes fluttering in ecstasy. He imagines Harry dismissing the image as simply odd. Harry’s trusting, and so, _so_ accepting. He could manage to believe his eyes were misinformed, if anyone could.

Something shift’s in Harry’s face, though, and Louis knows the damage is done. He can see that Harry’s caught everything.

That he’s far from impressed.

“We should…ugh, can we do this _later_?” Nick asks, face screwed up in deeply pained exasperation. “Clearly there’s some tension between you two—”

“Shut the fuck up, Nick,” they say in unison. Which, maybe Nick is a secret genius, because it seems to ease the tension between them the tiniest amount. Enough for Harry to speak.

His eyes rake over Louis, his disheveled clothes and manic expression. “Louis? What the fuck?”

Louis isn’t having it, though, because something has finally processed.

“You’re sleeping with _Grimshaw?_ ” he asks, a horrid mix of surprised and homicidally jealous. _Nick Grimshaw,_ a full _decade_ Harry’s senior, knows how he looks like when he comes. He knows what gets him off. How he tastes. How he _feels._

Harry shakes his head, curls falling into disarray immediately. Louis allows himself to be hopelessly endeared by that, in case this is the last time they ever speak.

“You cannot, can _not_ make this about me right now,” Harry says. “Louis, _what the fuck!”_

Louis laughs too loudly, at a terrifying loss. “Is that all anyone has to say to me anymore?”

“Oh my god,” Nick says. Louis’s about to snap at him, tell him off for having to constantly have the room’s attention on him, but before he can, Nick continues. “ _He’s_ the boy you were talking about?”

Louis wants to argue. He’s only mentioned Harry in passing, surely. He’s got a boyfriend, after all, even if he’s…even if Harry has…well. He’s not _that_ bad about his obnoxious _thing_ for Harry. Half of what makes it so torturous is that it’s unspoken.

Nick’s not paying Louis any mind, though. His eyes appear to be in the process of x-raying Harry, who has turned a shade not unlike Nick’s hat.

“He’s—that’s not—” Harry fumbles the words, looking miserable and frustrated. Louis wants to fold him into his arms, but then he’s gone, footsteps audible as he strides through the crowd as quickly as the swirls of people allow.

The door slams. In the moment of quiet that follows, Louis hears the song that’s playing clearly for the first time all night.

 _I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,_ Bing Crosby croons.

Wiping at his upper lip, Louis takes a moment and hates, _hates_ the song with all his might.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Louis has to go after him.

“Don’t go after him,” says Nick. “That’s a mistake.” He flicks at some invisible lint on his jumper to prove his supreme level of indifference either way.

Louis isn’t falling for it. Before he knew Nick had a vested interest in Harry, he would have, _maybe_. Certainly not now.

There’s still music spilling through the house, warm lights twinkling above the heads of intoxicated young professionals and artistic types. A man’s hearty chuckle booms over the noise. It might be Niall.

The door is still wide open from Harry storming out moments before. Louis rises. Closes it until the sounds of holiday are muted and only a splinter of light creeps into the bathroom.  

For the first time since Harry left, Louis speaks. “You’re fucking Harry Styles,” he clarifies. “You and him, you’re a thing.”

“Well I _told_ you the other day, didn’t I?” Nick sounds frustrated, a little bored, sort of distracted. High. Louis can still feel his own, the cold electric thrill of it in his blood, but it doesn’t feel good, now.

It hasn’t felt good in a while.

“You never told me _shit,_ Nick!” Louis bellows, voice crescendoing as he spits out the words. “You never told me a goddamn _thing_ about knowing him.”

He sounds jealous, he realizes. He sounds spurned.

Nick notices.

“Zayner not doing it for you, Barbie?” he drawls nastily. Even in the low light, Nick’s eyes have a knowing spark. Louis feels it like coals clenched in his fists.  “Is _that_ the fix you’re really after, then?”

Louis feels like a rubber band, like a spring coiled tight, like every cliché piece of imagery ever used to describe the absurd tension thrumming through him.

“I don’t mind sharing, you know,” Nick adds. He’s _mocking_ him, the son of a bitch is fucking with him, he _has_ to be. “It’s casual and all. Hell, bring your boy along, Harry’s into that sort of thing.”

It’s said with authority, because, Louis supposes, Nick knows firsthand. Nick knows what Harry looks like when he gets off. He knows what he looks like when someone _else_ gets him off.

“Fuck off, Grimshaw,” Louis mutters, opening the door and stalking out.

He halts halfway down the hall, a heady electronic remix of Jingle Bell Rock setting every alcohol and sugar-soaked body to a beat.

Nick is still standing in the dark bathroom when he returns, the knob. “Forget something?” he asks, sneering. There’s fresh powder dusting his right nostril.

“Yeah, actually,” Louis breathes, and channels all that pent-up tension into his fist.

Grimshaw doesn’t drop—regrettable, as he’s tall as a house and it would be undoubtedly satisfying to watch him hit the tile with a thud—but he sways ominously, eyes saucer-wide. A moment later, blood starts dripping from his nose, crimson and steady.

“What the _fuck,_ L—”

“ _Stop,_ ” Louis hisses. “Fucking shut up, Nick Grimshaw, my _god._ ”

The man looks mortally offended, but not furious, which is what Louis sort of expected. Figures Nick would be one to talk the talk and have nothing to back it up with. So preoccupied with grabbing some toilet tissue to plug his nose—bruises are beginning to form under his eyes, Louis definitely broke the big sodding thing—he doesn’t notice Louis’ eyes land on the counter.

Ridiculously, the blazing white powder seems to twinkle in its vial at him.

Nick is still too busy examining his nose in the mirror through feverish eyes to see Louis turn and go, bumping into him, hard and unnecessary, before striding through the door and the crush of overheated bodies, out of the flat’s front door.

It’s chill outside, of course, and Louis revels in it. Tries to exhale deep against the still-present tension in his muscles.

He hails a cab, shoving his hands in his pockets as he gives the driver his address.

Smiles to himself, a little darkly, when his hand closes around a tiny glass bottle.

 ***

Zayn is dead asleep when he returns—small miracles—so Louis is spared the passive-aggressive fight that would have followed his return home. Louis lays in bed, drumming his fingers in a staccato beat for a while. With a stab of irritation, he gives up on sleep, padding into the bathroom.

One line. Two.

“Shit yes, that’s it,” Louis mutters to himself, laying out a third and fourth. They feel as good as the first two.

He checks his phone’s clock. It’s hitting two in the morning.

Harry’s probably waiting for him downstairs.

Louis never really bothered to get fully undressed, just sort of stumbled into bed to wait out the spring-tight feeling in his body and the unhappy thoughts in his head. He figures, shoving his feet into his checkered pull-on’s, that if he’s to speak to Harry, it should be as soon as possible, and it should be alone.

He’s down the stairs in minutes, all four flights a fluorescent blur. He flings the foyer’s door open.

Harry’s not there.

Louis deflates, the buzz under his skin becoming an ache.

Because of course he’s not there. Because he saw Louis snorting coke at his fuckbuddy’s house (Louis’ stomach roils as he remembers that tidbit— _Nick &HarryNick&HarryNick&Harry_). Louis saw his face, the disappointment and disgust there. The anger.

But also, Louis’ feverish brain supplies, the hurt.

Too keyed up to completely abandon the idea of a walk, Louis opts for a run in the frigid night. There’s no particular route he follows, just the adrenal need to _get out, get out, get out_ and the thoughts swirling through his head and threatening to pin him down under their weight. If he pauses for even a second, Louis is certain they will.

So he runs. And yeah, Louis has been playing footie since he could walk, he’s by no means _out_ of shape, but he’s running _hard._ It feels like ages that he runs, feet pounding frantically on the pavement like he’s being chased.

He figures he is, sort of.

Harry has no right to his anger. Harry has no right to his judgments, his disapproving last stare into Louis’ eyes. No right to Louis at all.

Louis still feels claimed.

It’s awful, it’s traitorous, because Zayn has been by Louis’ side for years. Louis _loves_ Zayn, dammit, has an old notebook with those exact words doodled on it and a lease with both their names on and--

And exhaustion for the whole thing, maybe.

Louis’s wondered on occasion what would happen if he and Zayn just--stopped. How they would break things off, and what would change, and where he’d be left. The first time he wondered was in a purely hypothetical sense, Zayn asleep peacefully on his chest in a tiny bedroom back at their uni in Manchester. Louis remembers the faint panic that clawed at his chest back then, the visceral refusal to allow that to come to pass. He remembers his heart beginning to break over the mere idea.

He still feels that panic, along with the racing of his overworked heart, but Louis realizes the quality of it has changed. It’s the panic of being set adrift. Of being unmoored and uncertain, for once.

It’s fear of losing control, but not of losing Zayn.

The realization hits more or less at the same time his foot skids out from under him, sending him hurling to the ground. Sodding _skate_ shoes.

“ _Fuck._ ”

Louis takes a moment to assess from where he lays prone on the ground. It didn’t hurt nearly as badly as it could have—he thinks he took the majority of the impact in his right shoulder—but the world’s gone over in inky shadows uncharacteristic even to the late hour. He feels like he’s swimming as he tries to stand.

He manages, though. Barely.

“Awesome,” he mutters. “Today’s been just _ace_.” Everything’s beginning to hurt a bit more now. Bruises at _least,_ though he suspects his shoulder’s dislocated by the nauseating pain radiating from it, the movements he can’t quite manage with it. His adrenaline is still up, heart pattering double-time in his chest.

Louis finds his way back to the complex—he’d been looping spots him and Haz frequented, his heart lurches to realize—only to stumble up the steps and end up on his hands and knees directly outside the lobby door.

He’s going to vomit, fucking hell. Everything hurts, he can’t put proper weight on his right shoulder, everything is fucking _swimming—_ his _heart—_

“Lou?”

Louis looks up, and for a moment it could be Harry, tall and broad and staring at him with concerned eyes wide as dinner plates.

But the eyes aren’t green, and the shoulders are too broad, and they’re attached to arms far too muscular, and—it’s Liam.

It’s Liam Payne, because Louis’ life is a horrible, horrible joke.

“Piss off,” Louis says on instinct. It’s been a shit night already, he doesn’t need Liam’s bumbling kindness or endearing misuse of words or _concern._

“Louis?” Liam says again, getting closer. “Mate, what—”

“I _said_ piss off,” Louis says. Tries to say.

Liam’s brow scrunches adorably. Bastard. “You’re slurring. Did you fall?” A sniff. “Are you drunk?”

“Was,” Louis gets out. Fuck, is he dying? His heart feels like a dying fish, flopping feebly. Now that Liam’s mentioned, It _is_ getting hard to talk. Hard to focus. Hard to…

“Whoa, okay-” Liam lunges forward, scooping Louis up. He feels his cheeks flame, bats at the man’s chest weakly. Bloody firefighters.

“Put me down, you…” Nothing comes to mind in terms of insults. Nothing comes to mind, period.

“Did you hit your—yeah, alright, we’re going to hospital. I’ll call them when we get there.” Liam says, eyes distant like he’s already thinking about the next task as he fumbles for his mobile while still holding Louis aloft. Arse.

 _Them?_ “Them?” Louis asks groggily. It’s too difficult to keep his eyes open, so he doesn’t.

“Harry and Zayn,” Liam says. “Stay with me now, mate, c’mon.”

That, of all things, echoes in Louis’ head as he drifts.

_Harry and Zayn, Harry and Zayn, Harry and Zayn…_

_Stay with me._

He opens his eyes again, and the scene is very different.

For one, they’re not in the dark of the night or the dim of the stairwell. The light is stark and bright and even, washes over the greys and medicinal blues of the room with no regard for shadow. It means that Louis, even feeling fractured and blurry and _sore,_ holy hell, can see everything perfectly. It doesn’t help his ability to process it.

Three boys sit along the wall, all pale and exhausted looking. Harry is on the end, impossible legs splayed out as he stares at his giant, lovely hands, fiddling with the rings. Zayn is next to him, but he’s tucked securely into Liam’s side, pressed tight into him with everything from their shoulders down to their ankles touching.

Louis waits to feel a flare of jealousy or betrayal, maybe, and comes up only with confusion and vague nausea. It may have more to do with waking up in such a bleak space, rather than watching his boyfriend cuddle into the side of their heart-of-gold fireman neighbor.

Either way, he can’t look at it anymore. Something’s wrong, if they’re all here. Something’s wrong if he’s in a paper gown with an IV in his arm.

Louis looks around, hoping for an answer, but finds Harry’s eyes instead.

They’re green like warm ocean, glassy with fatigue, and fringed by dark, clumped lashes. Rimmed in red. And they’re shifting away immediately, refusing to meet his for longer than a heartbeat.

“Lou?” a voice croaks out.

It’s Zayn.

Louis wishes for the darkness again, because _Zayn._ He looks scared and sad and small, helpless and lost, and. Something in Louis cries out at that, still. Always. It’s an outrage to his biology that this boy could ever be made so miserable. _His_ boy, even now.

Liam doesn’t look miserable, though. Liam looks furious. Properly, truly angry. Louis’s never seen these thunderclouds in Liam’s knit brow, never seen this hurricane of anger swelling up behind his eyes.

It’s terrifying. Louis is beginning to suspect it’s aimed at him.

“I don’t know what happened,” Louis says. His voice is rough and too low, and his eyes flicker uncertainly. There’s no safe place to look, between Zayn’s dejection and Liam’s fury and Harry’s evasion, so he looks down, processes the wires and tubes surrounding his body. The IV in his left wrist, taped down, and the way the rails on his bed are still up.

Hospital. Louis’ in hospital, he realizes belatedly.

Payne, that bastard, actually took him here.

“You were out running at four in the morning, in the dead of winter, a _week_ before Christmas—” Zayn starts, voice hollow but growing with incredulity each second, “—and you. Liam says you showed up outside the lobby basically incoherent. He said you’d fallen down. Hard.”

“I thought you’d hit your _head,_ ” Liam says, frigid as the day outside. It’s far from his usual bouncy tone, his easy laughter; Louis feels very wrong-footed indeed.  “You were _fucked._ I thought you were drunk, maybe, dumb enough to be running outside in fucking Vans, but then you started convulsing in the car on the way here.” The words are nearly vicious now, precise and quietly seething.

Zayn cringes away from the word _convulsing_ (though he makes no move to extract himself from Liam’s side, Louis notes bitterly). Harry’s eyes snap shut like the statement causes him physical pain.

“I didn’t know,” Louis says.“I blacked out after I ran into you, I’m—I’m sorry if I scared you—”

Liam laughs caustically. “You didn’t _scare_ me.”

“Then why are you so fucking _wound up?_ ” Louis finally can’t help but snap. He’s feeling a particular brand of cornered, and he doesn’t know where the animosity is coming from because his head is made of cotton wool and his body feels pummeled from the inside out, though any pain is a dull ache. He wonders suddenly what’s in the IV.  

“After you were admitted, they ran some tests to figure out the convulsions,” Harry says, quiet but punishingly clear. “Zayn and I only got here after they’d sedated you, so we didn’t see, but the way Liam described it on the phone—”

“You could have died,” Zayn cuts in, accusation radiating from his eyes, dark circles like twin bruises underneath.

Harry swallows. Nods in agreement. Continues. “You almost did, yeah. Did die. But they. They stabilized you enough to run some tests.”

Louis’ stomach is sinking past his body and into the floor. He feels dizzy-light and made of lead all at once. “What did they find?” he asks. Over Zayn's quiet _Come on, Louis,_ Liam all but shouts “Cocaine, you complete dick.”

“Louis, there’s—there’s drugs and there’s _drugs,_ ” Zayn says, tone pleading. It breaks Louis, a little, because this is not Zayn’s strong suit, this type of confrontation. Louis never meant to drag him into it. Never meant for this discussion to happen at all.

“How long have you—why didn’t you _tell_ me, babe?” Zayn’s voice breaks. Liam inches infinitesimally closer to him, as if that’s even possible, nostrils flaring while he looks Louis over with something like disgust.

Liam’s got an arm around Zayn’s shoulders, and though Zayn is leaning forward slightly now that Louis’ awake (or making a valiant effort to be), he can see their hips pressed tight side-by-side, the alarmingly perfect way Zayn fits under Liam’s big arm. How Zayn’s tucked himself into Liam like it’s home.

“You overdosed,” Harry says, apparently the spokesperson of the three by virtue of being able to open his mouth without crying or yelling. “Your heart stopped, did you know? It stopped for a bit. They, um. They said that whatever you’re on is. The amount you _took,_ you should be—” Louis may have been overestimating Harry’s fortitude, because his eyes are wet and his bee-stung lips are trembling.

Louis is the very worst human refuse.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Zayn repeats. A tear slips from his lashes as he continues, “Why did Haz know, but not me?”

It’s a naked question, coated in vulnerability, and it’s a loaded question, holding a despairing kind of jealousy. Fear, maybe. Or resignation to an inevitability.

“I never _told_ him,” Louis scrambles to explain. His brain is barely cooperating; this strikes him as a rather improper time for an interrogation.“At the party, Harry walked in on us—”

“Us?” Zayn’s brow furrows. “Who do you mean? You and Nick?”

“Yeah,” Louis sighs. “Yeah, his friend. Uh. His…dealer, I mean. He was there, and. He had some. Product.”

Liam huffs in disbelief. Louis ignores it, but notes Zayn’s hand. It moves to rest gently, soothingly on Liam’s knee.

Worst of all, it seems to help.

“Harry found us doing lines off the bathroom sink,” Louis says. The words feel weird in his mouth, like he’s gone numb from acknowledging them.

In truth, it’s hard to force them from the separate world he’s kept them in--office all-nighters and clubbing with Nick on weekends and walks with Harry--and into the reality of his life.

He looks at Harry, meets his reluctant eyes. “You weren’t waiting for our walk last night.”

The boy splutters. “I didn’t think you were coming back _home_ last night, let a—” Harry cuts himself off.

Louis takes in Zayn’s arched brow, Harry’s furtive expression, Liam’s knowing, blistering gaze.

And this. This isn’t just about Louis ending up in the hospital, like the absolute idiot he is. This is a careful balance that must be struck, between his life with Zayn and his…whatever it is…with Harry, and a bad habit to boot.  

“I didn’t think you’d expect me to be there,” Harry finally settles on. Louis, rising star in PR that he is, has to admire the delicate delivery of the statement.

“I never _expect_ you to be there,” Louis says, watching the storms clear from Zayn’s eyes. Harry’s own darken unhappily, but, well. It’s a balancing act, after all. Hopefully he knows that. Hopefully he can hear the unspoken _I just always hope you are._

And hopefully, Louis thinks shamefully, Zayn can’t.

“He was gonna tell me about it today,” Zayn grates.

“So you could get help,” Harry adds.

Liam is still just staring.

Louis feels like something scraped off the side of the road, but even he recognizes taking things too far. “Help like—Haz, like a _doctor?_ ” Louis laughs a little. It hurts to do and it sounds reedy, thin. “I don’t need that. I’m not—”

“ _Stop._ ”

The room freezes in the time it takes Zayn to growl out the command. And it is one, so loud and out of character for Zayn that Louis _does_ stop, completely. His unobstructed hand is still raised, prepared to dismissively wave away Harry’s suggestion.

“This isn’t _hash,_ Lou,” Zayn yells. “This isn’t coffee or fucking cigarettes. You almost _died._ Your _heart_ stopped. I could’ve—” he stops, squeezing his eyes shut tight. Louis is robbed of breath until he starts again, quieter. “I could’ve woken up to a call from the—the _Met,_ telling me they’d found your body, instead of Li telling me to meet him here.” His voice cracks and he slumps sideways into Liam, eyes blinking rapidly while Liam massages his shoulder and stares intently at Louis, lips pressed tight.

“Z,” Louis breathes. “Love. I never meant to scare you, I’m not—”

“He’s right,” Harry interjects. “Louis. You know he is. You’re lucky to be alive, even.”

Louis huffs, frustration prickling through his fuzzy brain as he grinds his teeth.

“Please?” Zayn asks. “Please will you—”

“What’s in my IV?” Louis interjects. “Is it painkillers?”

Zayn fishmouths. “It’s…yeah, I guess. And fluids. ” His eyes and hair seem too dark against his skin when he pales, expression changing. “Lou, have you been—? Is coke all you’ve—?”

“ _No,_ Zayn, for fuck’s sake!” Louis finally snaps. “I’m just fucking exhausted and in pain, alright? I need to _sleep,_ and I need to stop hurting fucking _everywhere._ ”

“It’s your own goddamn fault,” Liam interjects, not at all calm now that he’s chosen to speak. His arm wraps more securely around Zayn. Louis feels molten as he stares him down. Liam quirks and brow and, if anything, his grip tightens. Zayn seems to mind not at all.

Louis feels like screaming. He wants to scream for the unfairness of being cornered like this, the hypocrisy of Zayn’s jealous eyes on his and Harry’s every interaction when him and Liam are clearly _something_ to each other. For the unlucky fall during his clandestine run that led to being here, for the bathroom with Nick and then _Harry,_ for—

All of it. Just. All of it.

Instead, he demands the nurse, demands more of…whatever is in the IV, and then allows the world to grow dark once again.

Their anxious whispers follow him into his sleep.

 *** 

He’s discharged from hospital a day after that first fight with the boys, but, unlike the tubes and too-clean smells of medical purgatory, they don’t leave the argument behind. Can’t.

Or won’t, maybe.

Louis understands where they’re coming from. He _does._ Zayn has only ever meant to look out for him, so that, even when he gets it wrong (now being a brilliant example), Louis can’t be _truly_ angry with him. Exasperated beyond belief, perhaps. Running out of ways to explain that he doesn’t have a problem (and places to squirrel away his dwindling supply so that Zayn doesn’t flush it like he did the larger baggie he found shoved in the corner of the lowermost bureau drawer, under some lesser-used, mismatched socks of theirs). But not angry, exactly.   

 Liam and Louis are frosty at best, even when the four of them play at normalcy for the sake of the season and their mental health. Louis’s noticing all sorts of shit about the way Zayn and Liam interact that he never did before, from the way Zayn revolves around to face the man like a flower does the sun, or the slew of private looks they share, entire conversations held in the space (never more than a couple feet, it seems) that separates them. Louis feels like he’s constantly battling for his boyfriend’s attention in Liam’s presence, wonders if Zayn doesn’t notice or simply doesn’t care. He wonders which is worse.

And Louis could be an adult and bring it up to his boyfriend of three-nearly-four years, but. Well. It _is_ the holidays, and more importantly nearly Louis’ birthday, and. He maybe feels a little guilty over the fright he gave Zayn with the whole hospital trip, courtesy of Liam Payne.

Which brings him right back to his simmering resentment for the man.

Liam isn’t making it anything other than subtext either, though, so Louis figures they’re at least square on that. Perhaps after the new year.

It’s completely ridiculous, but despite being Louis’ number one source of internal turmoil over the last couple of months (up against, it should be noted, _stiff_ competition), Harry is actually the one source of normalcy in the week leading up to Christmas. It’s a relief against the backdrop of Liam and Louis’ silent war and Zayn’s nights spent on the couch, nodding off while reading and drowsily refusing to come to bed.

The sight of Zayn curled in on himself on their sofa (he always could sleep like the dead) makes something in Louis throb dully. He doesn’t know what to do about that.

“I like you when you’re off of uni,” Louis says to Harry, bumping their shoulders as they wander down the street together. It’s as late as it ever is with them, and they’re slightly huddling for warmth against the cold even their thick scarves can’t deter. “Makes you springy.”

“Springy,” Harry muses, the word puffing out from his full lips on a chuckle. Louis feels his heart disintegrate as he watches. “Springy like sprightly?”

“Sure,” Louis humors. “Your hair as well. Any plans to cut it, Curly?”

“Fat chance,” Harry returns. He smiles, casts the streetlights into shadow with it.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. As far as Louis can tell, Harry has decided to never mention the party or the hospital again. His trust that Louis has it all under control, well. With Liam glaring daggers and Zayn shutting down, it’s made Louis appreciate the boy a hell of a lot more--which says something, as he was in way over his head to start with.

“When do you head home tomorrow?” Louis asks. He’d forgotten for a while that most people don’t work through the holidays. The last couple of years haven’t afforded the time for a larger celebration. Usually, he and Zayn spend a day in Donny with Louis’ family and then a day in Bradford with Zayn’s the week of Christmas, if they can’t make it for the holiday itself. They’d foregone it this year, cited hectic schedules to their families over the phone. They both know that’s not really why, though.

“Midday,” Harry answers. “Gemma’s picking me up. You’d love her, Lou, honestly.”

“I’d love to meet her sometime,” Louis says agreeably. Harry’s close to his family—and Louis knows about that, was once so close to his mother that he called her every day, before moving to London—so he can’t help but believe anyone responsible for how Harry turned out has to be some sort of seraph, sent to indirectly brighten the world through their involvement with the boy.

It’s possible Louis is way, way,  _way_ in over his head, here.

“I...want you to meet her,” Harry says. It’s quiet, sticks out from the easy flow of their conversation. “Um. I like my family to know the people I care about.”

Louis ducks his head. “Aw, Hazza.”

“Shut up, you know what I mean,” Harry says. He clears his throat.

“Do I?” Louis says playfully, but. The air, already thick with cold, grows solid enough to stop them in their tracks. Harry slows first, turning to look up at Louis through his lashes.

“You should,” Harry says. Louis’ heart stops. “I mean. I know it’s not—Louis, I know that’s not what you want. But. I just. Before I go home, with--everything, that's been going on--I wanted you to know that.” Tall and broad and endlessly magnetic, Harry looks surprisingly raw in the cold night. Stripped of...something.

Inhibition? 

Louis swallows hard. “Harry.”

“I’m telling you I’m. Look, Louis, I’m in—”

“Don’t,” Louis manages.

Harry’s expression shatters. “What?"

“Don’t. Please, just. Please don’t. It’s not…not right now, okay?” Louis shakes his head emphatically, trying to shake off this moment that he’s been ambushed with, the knowledge he can’t unlearn.

The problem is, he’s ecstatic. This is—it’s fucked, because Zayn, and—but this is what he _wants._ He wants Harry, so much it makes him lose his breath, makes him sick, makes him want to cry.

But Louis has had a dream, every too-long, lonely night this week, of giant green eyes and a reeling, electric pulse in his blood, of being crushed under the weight of someone’s disappointment. Of losing, endlessly, and deserving every second of it.

“Not right now,” he repeats, and turns back toward their flat.

Harry calls his name, sounding altogether too adrift for Louis to even _begin_ to reel in, so he walks faster. He needs a bump. Needs two. Needs the thickest lines he can handle right now.

He slides into the bedroom to find Zayn sitting on the bed. It’s only been a few days, but it feels weird seeing him here. Louis halts in the doorway, unsure, but moves forward again as he takes in the slump of the man’s shoulders. From this angle, he can’t see Zayn’s face, only that his head is hung.

“Z?” he says softly. He’s still feeling shaky, from the headrush of Harry’s words and almost-confessions and the comedown from his last line of coke (he’s tried to scale back, but Niall’s shit is so fucking _good_ it hardly matters).

“You told me,” Zayn says slowly, deliberately, “that you were going to stop.”

“I—I did,” Louis lies on reflex.

“Please don’t,” Zayn whispers, a horrid echo of Louis’ own words to Harry minutes before.

Louis pushes that thought down as he bristles. “I’m cutting _back,_ Zayn, it doesn’t happen overnight. Jesus.”

“You don’t need to cut back, Louis. You need to stop.” It sounds so measured coming from Zayn’s lips, so obvious, but it’s nonsense.

“Look, I get that you’re not where you want to be in life right now,” Louis says, working a different angle. “I understand you’re frustrated, babe, I do. But trying to find control by—”

“I booked a Gucci ad last week, y'know?” Zayn says, eyes sharp when they meet Louis’. “A little one, but. Louis, I could do this _professionally._ I’m—I’m good at it.”

“Well congratulations on being the best looking clothes rack,” Louis spits back. He can hear his northern accent coming out, chopping up his words.

“At least I’m not a fucking _junkie_ who can’t even keep his fucking life from falling apart.” Zayn stands, hands clenched, and Louis finally sees the baggie in his hands. That explains _why_ this is happening, at least, though it doesn’t explain why Zayn was looking in the toilet tank in the first place. Distrustful bastard.

Louis has to laugh at the dig, brittle and mean, because it’s funny. It truly is. “Falling apart, Zayner? How’s that? What, is it—the big flat that I _pay for,_ is _that_ how my life’s falling apart? The job I’m _amazing_ at? Which, by the way, it’s an actual job, so when I say that, it actually _means_ something.”

Zayn doesn’t rise to the (admittedly ample) bate. Instead his eyes—shiny with tears, and Louis can hardly recall when that would have been anathema to him—go blank as he sighs. Resigns himself. “You’re about to lose me,” he says.

Louis takes a literal step back, eyebrows shooting up. “What?”

“I’m not—Louis, things have been awful for _months._ We’ve hardly had a conversation since _summer_ , even before—”

“—I’ve been busy with work _—_ ”

“ _Even before_ things got so intense at the office,” Zayn finishes. “Before your overdose, before _Harry,_ before—”

Louis shakes his head, gestures wildly as he begins to feel cagey. “Harry and I aren’t—how can you even accuse me of that when you and Liam are—”

“No, you’re right, that’s wasn’t. Wasn’t fair of me,” Zayn says. His eyes are dark now, not with anger but…guilt.

He’s feeling guilty, but Louis doesn’t know why.

“Zayn,” Louis starts slowly, “Zayn, did something happen between you two? Between you and Liam.”

His boyfriend manages one nod before dissolving into tears, leaning into the wall as his knees give out.

“Zayn,” Louis tries again, “baby, did you two sleep together?” His nervous system is a mess, shooting off signals that overlap and contradict. He imagines it as a tangle of wires, crossing and sparking and taking the whole system down with it.

“No, but. I thought he was straight, Lou,” Zayn says forlornly. “We just got on so well and—I’m so _sorry,_ you just were never there and then I didn't--I _never_ know how to help you…” he sniffles, trailing off.

“That’s no excuse,” Louis says, surprised at his even tone despite the headrush. “What did you two do? You didn’t sleep together, what did you _do,_ Zayn? Tell me.”

Their bedroom feels far too safe to house this sort of wreckage, Louis thinks blandly, but here it is, leaving them to pick through it. Every sense feels dulled compared to the pounding in his head, the insanity that is this night.

“We just…we kissed,” Zayn whimpers, face buried in his hands. “You’d almost _died._ I was so scared, and. And he held me when I needed it and he kissed me. And I needed that, too.” He looks up, gaze resolute now despite the puffy redness of his face, the still-elegant disaster of his hair he’s run his fingers through it too many times.

Louis realizes two things in that moment.

The first is that Zayn Malik is probably the single most beautiful person on the planet, even distressed and crying and ashamed, even angry, even when he lets go.

The second is that Zayn Malik is not the love of Louis Tomlinson’s life.

It feels like—like the strings of a marionette being cut, honestly. It feels like a loss of tension that leaves Louis free but unable to stand. So he doesn’t. He sits beside Zayn, still sobbing into where his knees are folded up on the floor, and pulls him into his side.

“It’s alright, love,” he whispers, at a loss. “Look, I’ll—the coke, just. That’s not important right now, okay? I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the fight, I’m sorry…” _Sorry this is over._

“Yeah,” Zayn says, hollowed out and glassy-eyed from his crying jag, but much calmer. “I’m sorry too, Lou.”

They crawl into bed, too exhausted to do anything but cling to the last shred of the life they’ve built together.

***

No one _means_ to fall out of love, is Louis’ thought.

It’s not a happy thought, but it’s not explicitly _un_ happy either. He loves Zayn, will always love him, but he recognizes now the emptiness of their life together. So much of each day was the simple act of going through the motions. And, while being without that grounding, repetitive force feels jarring (or will—Louis’ a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them, and even he knows he hasn’t fully processed it all) Louis thinks he can do it.

He has to, after all, if he ever wants to be close to worthy of the giant eyes and cackled laughter and sunshine grin that circle through his mind every minute of the day.

No one means to fall out of love, but they do, and that—that _has_ to be okay.

He thinks about it while his mother wishes him a happy birthday and they chat on his office phone as he finishes up the very last of his pre-holiday work. He thinks about it while he carefully tiptoes past where Nick sits in his office, the only other person willing to work on the eve of a holiday (they haven’t really spoken since the party, Louis offering only solemn expressions whenever their paths cross. He doesn’t know _why_ he blames Nick for anything, but on some level, he does). He thinks about it on the way home and up the stairs, rubbing his nose distractedly as he anticipates getting into the bathroom for a moment alone with the fresh baggie in his briefcase.

Niall, as it happens, is actually a really cool guy. They have plans for drinks later in the week. Heaven knows Louis needs to be out of the flat as much as possible right now.

Louis only stops thinking about the way one can go from being _so_ sure of something to completely at a loss in a matter of minutes when he opens the flat door and is met with a shouted chorus of _Happy birthday_! Interspersed with a few cheeky calls of _Happy Christmas!_

Before Louis can fully process this turn of events, a Santa hat is being shoved onto his head and he’s being scooped into a tight hug.

“Happy birthday,” a feminine voice murmurs into his ear. Louis smells something sweet and floral, is transported instantly back to a small, sunlit kitchen in Doncaster—

“Mum?” He pulls back, takes in his mother’s smile. His heart _hurts,_ he’s missed her so much. “What’re you doing in London? Are the girls here?”

“Just me, love,” his mum replies, eyes shiny as she takes him in. Louis is suddenly abundantly worried that his nose is clean of anything that may raise suspicion. “Harry didn’t seem to think it was the sort of party the girls might enjoy. He offered to put together something for them, but—well. Anyway.”

“Harry,” Louis replies blankly. “He—he put this together? He _talked_ to you?”

“Try not to sound so surprised,” comes a deep voice, made small by uncertainty. Louis looks around, takes in the twinkling lights and snacks on the bar and people with drinks and even the tiny tree in the corner, what the _fuck,_ before finding Harry, maroon jumper setting off the cream of his skin and the glowing green of his endlessly fascinating eyes.

“Harry,” Louis repeats.

“Happy birthday, Lou,” Harry says quietly.

Louis’ mum must key into the tension, because she dissolves into the crowd with a quick kiss laid to Louis’ cheek and a promise to chat later. Louis doesn’t even watch her go.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Holmes Chapel right now?” he asks, moving forward into the press of people as he sheds his jacket. It looks like half his office is here, as well as some uni friends of his and Zayn’s, which—Harry did _this?_

“I didn’t want to leave,” Harry says slowly. His eyes widen. “Not, I mean. I didn’t want to leave things like that, with us. I made it so weird, I’m sorry.”

Louis has never seen Harry look this uncertain. It’s brilliantly endearing.

“So you threw me a surprise party?” he asks archly, suppressing a smile. Poorly. “You got half of London and my _family_ down here in a day, as an apology?”

“Well.” Harry scratches the back of his neck, taking a step toward Louis. “I’ve sort of been planning this for a while, like. As a gift. I knew you weren’t really going to get to celebrate this year, with work and…” Harry shifts, shakes his head as if shaking off a memory. His long hair falls right back into place, loose curls bouncing a bit. Actual Disney princess, is Harry Styles. “…everything.”

Louis doesn’t have words. The truth is, Louis _loves_ Christmas, the festivity, the colors and lights, the scent of pine, his _birthday,_ all of it. Zayn and him had a discussion a month ago regarding whether or not they’d even do it this year, Louis reminding Zayn of his schedule while Zayn kept insisting they do _something_ for Louis’ birthday, at least. Neither of them had been in a very festive mood recently, for obvious reasons, and Louis assumed…well, he honestly thought it was going to be a non-event.

Of course, life’s been nothing short of eventful since Harry and Liam moved into the building, so. Louis should hardly be surprised.

Harry is waiting expectantly, expression full of trepidation.

 _You’re the best person I’ve ever met,_ Louis wants to say.

Instead, he says, “I’m glad you met my mum.” Harry looks nonplussed, a little let down, maybe, so he continues. “She’s important to me. So are you. So…yeah. It means a lot.” He grimaces a little. It’s unfamiliar, what he’s doing. He’s not used to being subtle. “Y’know what I mean, Curly?”

“Might do,” Harry murmurs, but there’s something like a sunrise happening on his face.

 Louis fears he may never look away if he doesn’t right now. “I should go talk to—”

“Of course,” Harry says quickly. “Yeah. I made hors d'oeuvres, and there’s liquor, so.” He shrugs, smile continuing to grow until his eyes are crinkled nearly shut. “Have yourself a merry little, and such.”

“Talk to you later?” Louis asks, quieter.

Harry’s smile dissolves into something that…simmers. Louis feels heat shoot down his spine.

A moment later the taller boy’s back to doll eyes and pursed lips, nodding innocently.  “Happy birthday, Lou. Really.”

The party is sparkly, the music is mellow but festive, the food is delicious (Harry may very well be the perfect man), and it only takes Louis forty-five minutes and two drinks to work up the courage to talk to his own boyfriend.

Who, mercifully, seems pretty well  pissed by the time Louis’ made every possible hello to the other guests.

“Hey,” he says, choking back reflexive pet names as he comes to stand slightly behind and to the left of the boy.

Zayn spins from where he’s chatting with a pack of their uni friends. Liam is tucked into his side, hand loose enough on Zayn’s shoulder that it _could_ just be a laddy sort of gesture.

It’s not, though, as evidenced by the way the two slide apart incrementally when they notice him standing there. Liam gives him an assessing look, but there’s no animosity behind it.

Zayn and Liam have _kissed,_ Louis remembers for the hundredth time that day. And while he’s far from giving them his blessing…

“Hey,” Zayn returns softly. “Happy birthday. How’s—are you enjoying it?”

Louis nods stiffly. “It’s great. I’m shocked you guys got it all set up without me knowing,” he says amicably. The words are polite and too-formal. For a moment, he wishes for a way back to the easy banter and flirty glances that marked their early relationship.

It’s when he realizes just how far back he’d have to travel to get there—senior year of uni? Junior, even?—that he stops wanting it so badly.

“Wasn’t too hard to manage,” Zayn says, a bit pointedly. Liam’s hand hovers protectively for a moment around Zayn’s waist before he drops it. Probably best not to be all over the guest of honor’s ex boyfriend before they have the chance to break the news to everyone or, you know, officially end things.

Louis accepts Zayn’s barb with a small head nod, eyes downcast. “Liam, I was actually wondering if I could speak to you for a moment.”

Liam’s jaw drops in surprise for a moment, but he recovers quickly. “Yeah, uh. Totally, mate.”

The find one of the quieter corners, away from the eclectic Christmas music and chatty guest. Louis takes a minute to gather his thoughts before he begins.

“You’re in love with him,” he says, staring directly into Liam’s chocolate-brown eyes. They’re warm, lit by Christmas lights, but they’re guarded, too.

Liam swallows hard once, throat bobbing under the distinctive freckle there.“And you’re not,” he answers.

They’re silent for a moment, letting the truth reverberate out in the open where, probably, it belonged the whole time.

“I never meant to hurt him,” Louis says. “No one ever means to fall out of love.”

Liam cocks his head, one arm wrapped around his own waist. He swishes his cocktail. Louis wonders how he ever could have thought he was straight.

Or maybe Zayn just does that to people.

“I suppose not,” Liam says. “I know you care about him, Louis. Zayn’s just—I hardly have to tell you, you of all people would know, but—”

“He’s a gentle person,” Louis finishes, nodding a bit. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Liam echoes. He takes a swig of his drink before speaking again. “And for the record, I _am_ sorry for how I reacted at the hospital."

"Ta."

"He can’t be with you for this."

Louis’ brow scrunches. “For what?”

Liam laughs a little. “For whatever the fuck you think you’re doing, messing about with hard drugs.” It’s said quietly, but so firmly Louis can tell it’s been on Liam’s mind a lot. He wonders if he and Zayn talk about it. How often.

He tries hard to bite back the acerbic replies and automatic deflections. Whether he can make Liam understand that he’s fine or not, it’s hardly going to be worked out at a Christmas/birthday party when everyone’s half gone on booze and holiday cheer. So he sighs and looks at the small crush of his friends and loved ones, here to celebrate and get drunk on someone else's dime. Because life, in all its infinite insanity, does go on.

“Do me a favor?”Liam starts, drilling Louis with that stare again.

“Depends,” Louis answers, and _that_ is a reflex he has no desire to kick.

“God, you’re annoying,” Liam giggles. “How did—no, but really. Uh. Look after him, okay?”

Louis lets the confusion show plain on his liquor-flushed face. “Thought your whole point was that's _your_ job now, little Liam.”

There’s an absurd sort of pause where Liam seems to evaluate their relative heights, before huffing out an exasperated breath and trying again. “I meant Harry.”

“Oh.” Louis’ face reddens a bit more. “We’re not—”

“Stuff it,” Liam interjects, but he’s smiling, actually, and rather gently. “Everyone else in the room can see it.”

They stop to let who Louis _thinks_ is the inebriated wife of a coworker pass through to the bathroom. Louis stares after her, quickly goes through a mental checklist to make sure all of his supplies are tucked away in the little box under the sink he’s taken to burying them in. Satisfied, he turns back to Liam.

“He’s too good for me, Li,” Louis admits quietly. It’s a vulnerable statement, but, for obvious reasons, Louis never gets to talk about how he feels about Harry to anyone. He needs that, he realizes. Needs to be able to feel whatever he’s feeling without concern it will send his whole world crashing down.

Liam shrugs a little. “Maybe. I mean, yeah, Harry’s definitely too good for you, he’s—but _you’re_ who he wants, so. There’s something to that.”

“He’s fucking one of my coworkers,” Louis retorts, ignoring the first half of Liam’s statement.

Another docile shrug. “Ask Harry about that.”

“About what?” comes a deep voice. Louis jumps and spins at the same time, coming to a halt facing Harry who, for his part, looks just as startled by Louis’ reaction.

“Sorry,” they say simultaneously, neither for a readily apparent reason.

“Oh dear. I’m going away now,” Liam says, good-humored now that what needs to be said has been.

 _Solid dude, that Liam Payne,_ Louis thinks, before devoting his remaining brain energy to the man in front of him.

“So,” Harry drawls. “Some party, yeah?”

“It’s been a lot of fun,” Louis assures. “I still can’t believe you pulled this off without me knowing. A right master of surprise, you are.”

“The lads helped. And I swore everyone to secrecy, so.” Harry shrugs, glowing under the praise.

“Did you…” Louis takes a breath. “D’youinviteni?”

Harry blinks. “Sorry?”

Dammit. “Did you end up inviting Nick, or…?”

Harry sucks his lower lip into his mouth, looking like a naughty child. “Can we walk for a bit?”

Louis laughs into the dregs of his drink, downing the rest. “Always, Hazza.”

***

It could be any night as they stumble out onto the street.

But it’s not. It’s Christmas Eve—the last hour of it, in fact—and Louis’ birthday, and the peculiar magic of that one night is all around them. The sky is a soft blanket from which fat flakes of snow are falling, muffling their conversation and keeping them locked in a sense of intimacy.

And it’s good.

“I didn’t invite him,” Harry says. They fall into step easily, arms bumping as they stroll slowly. “I haven’t talked to him since his party.”

 _Since I found you two_ goes unspoken; Louis is grateful. “Oh.”

“Haven’t wanted to,” Harry continues. “He’s the one who got your started, isn’t he?”

Louis is still riding a buzz from liquor and cocaine, both, so the comment hits him a lot more softly than it could have. It’s still jarring as all hell.

“Yeah,” he admits. “Work was…” He exhales heavily. “It was kicking my arse, frankly. But it’s the entire reason I— _we_ —moved here.” He kicks at a snowdrift, winces when it becomes apparent it’s more ice than snow. “That job is everything.”

“It’s wearing you down,” Harry says. He stops walking, turns to face Louis straight-on in echo of the night before.

The air is soft and cold and electric. A snowflake gets caught in Harry’s lashes. Louis is transfixed.

Like the slow crescendo of a movie score, Harry’s hand hesitantly rises to Louis’ cheek. His eyes are wide and swirling with something inescapable.

Louis can’t breathe. He can’t breathe, but he can lean into the warm touch, Harry’s large hand cupping his jawbone while his thumb caresses it, eliciting shivers Louis no longer has any desire to fight.

“You don’t deserve to work somewhere that makes you hate your life,” Harry murmurs. “And I’m sorry Nick—he’s—god, he’s such a knob,” he mutters, frowning deeply.

Louis laughs. “Yeah, he is.” He sniffs. “Good shit though.”

Harry’s frown grows. “Stop—stop rubbing at your nose like that.”

Louis realizes that yes, in fact, he had been rubbing at his nose, and drops his hand. “Sorry.”

The younger man’s eyes have gone over all big and sincere again as he slowly lowers his hand from Louis’ cheek. “Lou—”

“How did you even meet Nick?” he asks.

Harry’s mouth stays open while he processes the change of subject. Louis is sort of fixated on his bottom lip, wants to suck the fleshiest part of it into his mouth and bite down.

“A club,” Harry replies. “We—we just sort of. My first year of uni, we started hooking up.”

Louis squints. “Harry, Nick is a decade older than you.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s…” Louis frowns a little. “I don’t actually have any room to talk, I was a right slag my first year of uni.”

“Let’s just agree that Nick has a lot of vices that he’s happy to share, yeah?” Harry says, measured voice heavy with memory. He pierces Louis with a stare as he admits, “He tried to get me to use, when I was younger. Made it seem so cool.”

It’s an odd moment for Louis, because he feels automatically rankled by the notion of Harry, impossibly younger and new to London, bent over some grimy club bathroom sink and snorting lines with Nick’s hand tucked into the back pocket of the boy’s tight skinnies. Using him up, outside and in.

On the other hand. Louis _loves_ his cocaine. It gives him—everything, power and control and a sense of magnetism that _of course_ Harry doesn’t desire, because he’s got it naturally.

He doesn’t need drugs to survive life here.

“Why didn’t you start using?”  Louis asks. “Nick probably had a lot of sway on you, yeah? Why didn’t you give into that?”

Harry bites his lip a second after a snowflake lands on it. It melts, makes his lip gleam. Louis is gone for this kid, worse than he was for Zayn, worse than he is for his white powder. It’s a mess.

“I knew I’d get addicted,” Harry says simply. “Because that’s what narcotics do. And I—I only ever want to be addicted to things that make my world better. Like exercise,” he muses, then smirks. “Or baking, I suppose.”

“It _does_ make my world better,” Louis mutters petulantly. “That job—”

“ _Hang_ the fucking job,” Harry says, voice slow and sweet and deep. “If you didn’t work at that twatty PR firm, would you still need the coke?”

Louis squirms. “It’s not that simple.”

Harry nods. “I know, babe.” The simple term of endearment is dizzying. “I know it can’t be easy, one way or another.” He breathes in deep, a preparatory gesture. “I just. Louis?” He crowds in closer, hands finding their way to Louis’ waist. “I want this.” He leans into Louis’ ear, breath puffing across the shell in a way that has Louis’ cock twitching in interest. “Do you want this?”

Louis lets out a shuddering exhale. “Yeah.”

“You and Zayn, you’re—?”

“ _Yes,_ Harry, did you _see_ him and Liam?” Louis says, rolling his eyes through a smile. “Fuck, just kiss me already.”

Harry’s breathing stutters, but he doesn’t move from Louis’ ear.  Louis can _feel_ his lips there on the sensitive flesh, it’s completely maddening. “I’ll only kiss you if you promise to try and stop.”

Louis huffs a little. “ _Harry._ ”

“’M serious,” Harry whispers. “God, Louis, I want you more than anything. Conversation in the middle of the night and running errands and fucking you through the mattress, just, _all_ of it. But I swear I will walk away right now if you aren’t willing to—to at least _try._ ”

He means it so fiercely, and Louis. He’s powerless to fight that.

Louis says nothing, and Harry must panic, because he keeps talking, voice thicker. “They say that—that when you give up one addiction, you substitute it with another. Louis, let me be that for you. Can I? Please.”

It’s a heady thing to say, adds to the buzz under Louis’ skin.

Harry as an addiction? He’s already almost all Louis thinks about, still the greatest rush he gets all day, blow included.

And maybe. Maybe it could work.

“Okay,” Louis breathes, muscles clenching with fear and chemical-born dread. “Okay, _yes._ ”

“Thank fuck,” Harry breathes, pulling Louis into him in the same second.

It echoes, Louis could swear by it. The kiss is a canon’s boom, a flash grenade. He feels deaf and blind from the force of it, hears only static and sees only impossible light.

Harry’s mouth is warm and tastes of pine needles from the gin (s _easonal,_ Louis spares a moment to think) and his _tongue,_ oh god. It’s—there can’t be a better word than _deft,_ sweeping in perfect, persuasive motions into Louis’ mouth that make him want to open up as much as possible, keep Harry inside in any way he can.

“Fuck,” Louis says on a ragged breath when they draw back for a moment. Harry nods sympathetically, apparently past words, and then they’re back to it. Louis, remembering something, indulges the urge to bite at the plumpest part of Harry’s lips, making him moan obscenely.

“Sensitive?” Louis all but purrs into his mouth. Harry laughs back into his.

“Lip and nips,” Harry says, and Louis groans half from the cheesiness and half because _Harry likes having his nipples played with._

He lifts a hand and snakes it under Harry’s shirt to test the theory. It pulls an actual whimper from Harry’s lips. 

“Bed,” Louis breathes. “Fuck, Harry, we need a _bed._ ”

Harry nods absently, but pulls back a smidge to meet Louis’ eye. “You sure?”

Louis balks. “Aren’t you?”

Harry takes in his expression, which Louis can only imagine is needy and vulnerable and more than a little bit lovesick.

But Harry answers “Yeah, love,” in the warmest tone imaginable, and that’s really everything, right now.

Possibly forever.

They meander back the way they came, desperation to get each other off matched only by their drunken clumsiness. It’s a process, and Louis’ dick is straining in his jeans by the time they’re outside Harry’s door. The sounds of the party are still drifting through Louis’ door, and that’s weird to think about, isn’t it?

“Should’ve known,” Louis says. The words echo in Harry’s mouth where it’s poised over Louis’.

“Mmm?” Harry asks, nipping down Louis’ neck even as he blindly searches his pocket for his keys.

“When I saw that— _fuck me, good god—_ ” Harry smirks against the fresh bruise he’s sucked into Louis’ neck. “—that moving van in my parking space, should’ve known you’d, mmmm, mess up my life.” The last is nearly a whine due to the exquisite pressure of Harry’s hand grinding into his cock through his jeans.

“That was your,” Harry pants into his neck,  “your spot? Fuck, I’m so sorry.” He finally fumbles the door open and hauls them inside. Louis, for his part, feels his knees nearly give out.

He pushes Harry back into the door as it closes behind them and hooks his leg over his hip, grinding their cocks together.

“Make it up to me,” Louis goads.

“Might do,” Harry returns. “How attached are you to this shirt?”

Wait. “What?”

Harry moves his massive hands between them and massages the fabric above Louis’ sternum for a moment. His intention becomes clear when he grips where the shit buttons and—

“You complete _bastard,_ I _love_ this shirt,” Louis gasps, delighted and turned on and giddy-drunk.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” Harry assures, pushing the fabric off Louis’ shoulders. “Sew it, even. Jesus, Lou, your body.”

Louis defies anyone not to warm under the intense scrutiny of Harry Styles. The flat is dark around them, but his eyes still shine as they take in Louis’ torso, hands and then mouth following the trail his eyes blaze over his flesh. Harry’s mouth is nothing short of worshipful, pressing searing open-mouthed kisses to Louis’ chest. He sucks both of Louis’ nipples into his mouth in turn, nibbling until they’re stiff peaks. Louis’ brain has most certainly checked out for the night, but he still manages to give Harry a taste of his own medicine, pinching at the boy’s nipples until he’s nearly pleading into the skin of Louis’ abdomen.

“Bed, Haz,” Louis reminds him frantically. “Fuck, can I—can I suck you off?”

Harry looks like he wants to cry from joy at the mere suggestion. “Please, yes.”

The push their way into the second bedroom—Louis is unsurprised to learn that Harry has large, hipster photographs on his walls and an ample music collection in a low console in the corner—and Louis is a man obsessed, pushing Harry’s jumper and thin tee over his elegant, muscled shoulders, pinning him down and climbing on top of him to create his own sloppy line of kisses down Harry’s lean body.

“Trousers off, c’mon,” Louis rumbles over the top of Harry’s hipbone. There’s a set of laurels there that Louis’ eager to trace with his tongue.

“You like getting tattoos,” he notes as Harry shimmies out of his restrictive jeans.

“Yeah,” Harry pants, flinging his trousers off his foot and onto the floor while Louis works on his little black pants, pulling them down past his flushed cock and over the small swell of his arse.

Louis’ hovering just over Harry’s cock—fucking massive, Louis should have guessed—looking up into the man’s face. He’s already trembling and squirming, completely at a loss beyond gasped responses, and they haven’t even _started._

“Do you like the pain?” he asks, fingers feather-light over the slight curve of Harry’s dick.

The boy whimpers. “What?”

“Of tattoos, love,” Louis croons. “Do you like how it feels when you get them? Like feeling marked?”

“Y-yeah,” Harry manages, breathing turning jagged when Louis traces his lips over the tip of his cock. “ _Lou._ ”

“I’m right here, babe,” Louis teases.

“I’m going to _die_ if you don’t—oh,” Harry sighs, body melting as Louis begins moving his mouth along his length in earnest. Firm little closed-mouth kisses turn open and greedy in moments until Louis thinks he has Harry sufficiently worked up and can begin actually sucking him.

Louis prides himself on his blowjobs. He’s enthusiastic and meticulous, tongue creating a separate rhythm from his bobbing head or steadily-moving hand. He hums around the tip of Harry’s cock, shiny with his spit, just to hear him cry out like the pleasure comes as a shock. He slows his pace and returns to the kisses along Harry’s length so that he can watch him squirm in the bedroom’s low light.

He’s so flushed and pretty, every inch of him, and Louis _wants_. So while he’s a champion cocksucker and would gladly take Harry all the way down, swallow around him until he was coming down Louis’ throat, he’d really rather get inside him first.

“Do you have supplies, love?” he asks minutes later against the crease of Harry’s hip. The boy is trembling beneath him, eyes glassy and far-away from being held on the edge. Louis can’t help that he loves teasing him; even now, his hand is lightly massaging Harry’s balls, watching him shake from the uneven pleasure of it.

“Nightstand,” Harry grits out.

Louis moves up from between Harry’s splayed legs, his own bare cock sliding over the muscled planes of Harry’s chest as he shuffles up the bed. There’s a bottle of lube and a handful of condoms waiting in the dresser next to  what might be a journal.

“Do you want—?”

“Wantyoutofuckme,” Harry says in one gasped breath. “Please, just. Please?”

Louis has to actually physically close his eyes against the wave of arousal Harry, splayed out and dark-eyed and _begging Louis to fuck him,_ sends through his body.“Yeah. Definitely, yes.”

Harry gives a tiny nod of his head, biting his own lip and grabbing at his hair like he’s distressed by how much he’s turned on. Louis had a sex life before Zayn, knows what it looks like when someone’s faking desire, and this. This is definitely not that.

Harry wants this every bit as badly as Louis does.

And also…

“Hey, uh,” Louis starts. It feels weird, because his conversational tone is in direct contrast to his flushed skin and raging hard-on and fingers, slicked up with lube and slowly moving to the cleft of Harry’s arse. “I wanted to say.”

“ _What,_ ” Harry groans, but he’s smiling down at Louis through hazy eyes.

“Last night, when you nearly said…” Louis has a moment where he actually doubts it. He could swear he knew where Harry was going with that statement, had _known_ hearing the words would be a game over for his resolve, but. Now he’s not so sure.

“Yeah,” Harry says, catching on to his train of thought. “Yeah, I wanted to tell you—”

“Do you still—” Louis cuts him off.

Harry’s brow furrows. “Do you not want me to say it?”

“ _No,_ ” Louis says. “I just, um. I was scared, then.” He swallows, looks up from Harry’s arse and his glistening, stilled fingers to Harry’s face. It’s as open as it’s ever been with him. Louis can remember his fear, the night previous, the panic. “I’m not now, though. And also—”

“I love you,” Harry rushes.

“I— _fucking_ hell, Harry, that was my line,” Louis huffs, exasperation covering for the explosion of warmth in his chest and the inescapable, massive smile spreading over his face.

“Yeah, well,” Harry shrugs, wiggles his arse a little in invitation. He’s absolutely beaming. “I couldn’t wait. Speaking of…”

“Right,” Louis says, pressing just a bit firmer at Harry’s hole, massaging the muscle gently. “I love you, by the way.”

Harry groans in response. “That’s the stuff.”

Louis’ nose crinkles in confused delight, unsure if Harry means the confession or his slick fingers at his entrance. He decides to just give him more of both.

“I love you,” he whispers, circling Harry’s rim a moment longer before pushing one finger past the resistant muscle. He can feel Harry consciously working to relax, wonders when the last time he bottomed was. He resolves to go slow.

“I’m _in love_ with you,” Louis adds, beginning to move the single digit inside Harry. He’s so warm, but still absurdly tight. “Baby, love, I need you to relax for me,” he murmurs.

“Trying,” Harry whimpers. He’s biting at his lip, eyes wild and hair a wreck. Louis feels winded by his love for him. “Haven’t— _ah—_ done this in a year, at least.”

Louis’ liquor-soaked brain tries very hard to forget what it now knows about Grimshaw’s preferred sexual role as he works on fucking the one finger he has inside Harry rhythmically.

A thought occurs.

“Can I try something?” Louis asks quietly. Harry’s biting his lips a pretty shade of cranberry-red, but he still manages a nod and a permissive hand motion.

Louis hasn’t rimmed anyone since early uni. Zayn was never into either end of it (in a manner of speaking) and Louis, well, he wasn’t going to push it. Not when he was first hooking up with the gorgeous Education Studies major, and not when they’d established a life together in a city neither of them knew.

The truth is, Louis is always up to give or receive a rimjob. It’s just—it’s intimate and filthy-hot and positively devastating, all at once.

His cock is already leaking, imagining how someone as responsive as Harry is going to handle it.

He pulls his finger out and hikes Harry’s legs over his shoulders, hears him whimper from the manhandling. Tucks that information away for later. And then he starts tracing patterns on Harry’s cheeks with his nose, smiling at the staccato breaths the action draws. He circles closer and closer to his goal, nipping once at Harry’s arse before finally spreading him and getting to it.

Harry tastes like lube, more than anything—Louis realizes now that it’s mint-flavored, which, handy—and he’s exactly as responsive to the action as Louis suspected he’d be. He keens when Louis touches his tongue to the still-tense muscle, massaging into it until Harry’s body does the work for him and relaxes. Louis brings his fingers back to Harry’s hole, pushing his middle digit in with ease this time around. He licks around it, struggles for a minute to find a rhythm and fight the slight strain in his shoulders from having Harry’s shaking legs clamped around his neck. He finds a pattern he likes, which is a pattern Harry must _really_ like if the noises he makes are any indication. Louis takes advantage of it and pushes in a second finger.

“Theeeeere we go,” he rumbles against Harry’s hole, puffing out a giggle on the sensitive skin when Harry stifles something like a scream. “Don’t quiet yourself, beautiful,” he says, fucking Harry on his fingers a little faster as he begins scissoring them. “Wanna hear you.”

Harry arches his long body, throws his head back as he moans, low and sweet. Louis squeezes a third finger in, pleased when Harry’s brow doesn’t scrunch at the pressure, even as he clamps vice-tight around Louis’ fingers. Louis licks a little harder, flirts with licking _into_ Harry before going back to fat, spit-soaked stripes around his rim.

“’M ready,” Harry pants out, face nearly red, arse gyrating on Louis’ fingers. “Please, Lou—”

“Give it a minute,” Louis returns, barely disengaging his mouth from its task. God, he loves eating arse. And Harry. _Harry_ was made for this, whimpering absurdly and looking absolutely fucked out from Louis’ hands and tongue, flicking at his hole to elicit sweet little gasps.

Finally, Harry is nothing but a quivering mess of a boy, begging for Louis until it seems like his lips could go numb, and Louis is so far beyond ready for this.

“Ready?” Louis asks.

“That’s—what I’ve been _saying,_ ” Harry whines, but there’s the shimmer of laughter in his destroyed voice.

“I heard you,” Louis says idly, ripping open a condom and kneeing up the bed a bit to wiggle into position. Harry’s legs are still over his shoulders, trembling like the rest of him.

“I love you,” Harry says wetly. His eyes are gleaming, pupils blown wide behind the boozy, love-soaked beginnings of tears.

Louis is too struck by the gravity of that, the sincerity of it, the _redemption_ of that love’s existence, to do anything but respond in kind.

“I love you too, Harry,” he murmurs, choking on how much he means it. “So much.” He looks down at where his cock is inches away from Harry’s hole, pink and shining still with lube and saliva. It's an odd contrast to the sweet words, but it's weirdly fitting. “I’m gonna fuck you now, ‘kay? Gonna take care of you.”

Harry says nothing. He just keeps his eyes pinned to Louis’ face while Louis positions himself with his hand and begins the slow push in.

It’s an absurdly perfect drag, hot and not resistant anymore, but still so _tight, fuck,_ and Louis kind of gets the tears. This is his. Harry is his. And he’s Harry’s.

What a fantastic fucking birthday.

It takes a moment to get himself fully buried in Harry’s arse. Louis can’t breathe for how good it feels once he’s there. Their skin sticks together where they’re joined, tacky with sweat and lube.

“Wish you could see this,” Louis says lowly, taking in the junction of their bodies. “You look so good with my cock in you, love.” The dirty talk is partially a stall tactic—he’s not convinced that he won’t come right now if he doesn’t take a moment to get his bearings—but it’s kind of having the opposite effect. Louis’ glad he took so much time to warm Harry up, get him lose and pliant and close, because this is _not_ going to last long.

Harry lets out a noise like dying, clenches himself around Louis to prompt the man into action.

It works. Louis keeps up a string of impossibly dirty lines, things like _wanna see you bounce on my cock sometime_ and _your tight little arse is the best I’ve ever had_ while thrusting, _hard._ It goes from rough to fucking brutal, Louis digging his fingers into Harry’s flesh near the base of his laurel tattoos to hear him cry out, his cock bobbing with the force of Louis’ thrusts.

“Wanna mark you up,” Louis gasps out, “make you mine.”

“Yours,” Harry echoes, breath punching out of him as Louis finds the angle he’d been searching for. “Yours, Lou, please—”

“Fuck—”

Louis moves his hand to Harry’s cock, pumping hummingbird-fast as he continues to pound into him, hitting his prostate like it’s his _job,_ which he supposes it _is_ now.

“Gonna— _Lou_ is,” Harry cries out.

“Do it,” Louis prompts. “Do it, baby, c’mon, come for me—”

And Harry finally does, thick ropes of come shooting up to cover his butterfly tattoo (Louis had always thought it was kind of garish, but now, seeing it covered in his come, he thinks he’s kind of into it) and to the tips of the swallows’ wings.

Harry pulses around Louis as he comes, sending him tumbling over the edge and into his own orgasm. The world fades to a snow white, the destroyed noises Harry is making the only indicator a world exists outside of Louis Tomlinson.

“Fuck,” he says heavily when his ears stop ringing from the force of his orgasm.

“… _yeah,_ ” Harry agrees, eyes hazy as they take in Louis panting over him. He lowers his long legs from Louis’ shoulders slowly. “That. Yeah.”

In retrospect, the rest of the night will blur for Louis. He’ll know what actions were taken—tossing the condom, cleaning them up with a warm, damp cloth, crawling under the covers, but no specific image will stand out after the sight of Harry open and wanting with Louis’ cock in him.

Except for this:

Harry, curled to face him in the earliest light of Christmas Day, eyes a light pine, saying softly: “I believe in you, y’know? To beat it.”

There’s no question what he means. There’s no question that he means it. So Louis does something he’s pretty fucking hesitant to.

He believes.

 ***

“So how’re—things?”

“Recovery?”

“Oh. Yeah, sorry, I didn’t—didn’t want to—”

“They say it’s important you say it.”

“Right, sorry.”

“Zayn. Don’t worry about it, okay? You didn’t know. I meant it when I said I didn’t want to make it your problem. It’s already fucked up your life enough.”

“Well…yeah. And thanks for saying that. But you’re doing well?”

“You know, I am? It’s…some days are worse than others. But every day is better than it was at first.”

“That was terrible to watch. And—that goes away. I bet.”

“It does, apparently. Dr. Hotchkiss _promised_.”

“But did he pinkie swear?”

“You’re honestly the biggest fucking dork I know.”

“Aw, Tommo.”

“Shut it. How’re things with Li?”

“Oh, uh. Really…really good. They’re…yeah.”

“The flat looks great.”

“You like it? I was worried the paint choice was too bold, but—”

“It looks just right. All of it. Truly.”

“That means a lot.”

“It means a lot that it means a lot.”

“How’s Haz?”

“Exams.”

“Oh, dear god. Say no more. Please.”

“Right? But, uh, mostly he's just preparing for culinary school after he graduates in the spring.”

“God, he’s ambitious. Wish I had that kind of drive.”

“He’s amazing. We…we push each other, I’d like to think. Support each other. And you prat, you _completely_ have that drive. You could get a teaching job in a _snap_ if you could stop looking pretty for half a second.”

“It’s good money. And…I like it, you know? Now that it’s not just local shit?”

“Now that it’s _international photo shoots?_ ”

“It took a long time to admit that—oh, come off it. I know for a fact you took Harry to Italy last week for your ‘work trip.’”

“It _was_ a work trip! He needed the break anyway, who am I to deny him.”

“You’re liking your new gig, then?”

“I love the work, and the people aren’t fucking awful there, like…well. _Marketing,_ Zayner, I was meant to do _marketing._ We really should have thought of it sooner.”

“We got there eventually.”

“…We did, didn’t we? All of us.”

“Mmm...can I just—I’m glad we can have this conversation. I…for a while I thought I’d never forgive you. But. I’m glad I did.”

“Alas, it was one of your many mistakes. I’m only here to steal all the wine guests brought and eat your food.”

“Knock yourself out, you dickhead, your boy made it all anyway.”

“Can you pass me the lighter?”

“Where—?”

“Right—thanks.”

“So no herb anymore, either?”

“Can’t risk it. Don’t want to. Maybe someday. Hothkiss says it’d probably be fine, but. Harry’s eyes go over all Bambi about it, and. I don’t think I’m there, yet.”

“That’s good, that you know your limit.”

“Damn right it is. I’m all self-aware now. I meditate.”

“You mean Harry meditates.”

“Potato, tomato.”

“…Can I ask you something?”

“Always, Z.”

“Please don’t…don’t think I’m, like, bitter about it, or—jealous, or—”

“Don’t qualify it, babe, just say it.”

“Why wasn’t I enough?”

“Zayn.”

“No, I mean—to get you to quit? To get help? Why wasn’t…what did I do? What _didn’t_ I do?”

“Oh. Oh, Zayn, no, it’s not. It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like? I’m sorry, god, I sound like—some jealous idiot ex or—”

“No, you have. You have a right to that question. And its answer, I suppose. Uh. I don’t really know, is the thing? It wasn’t a _lack_ of anything. It wasn’t anything you did, or did not, do. I just. I wasn’t ready.”

“Then why…?”

“We were—look, we were stagnant, yeah? Where we were? The two of us?”

“Point-blank miserable, more like.”

“And so—yeah, basically—so I was…my mind was…it was just in a bad place. Zayn. You could have been anyone and it still would have happened.”

“What if I’d been Harry?”

“Well, what if I’d been Liam?”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“My point is: we found what we needed, right? Look at that big old chunk of metal, you _must_ agree.”

“It’s platinum, which I know you know.”

“But you see what I’m saying?”

“I…yeah.”

“Really?”

“ _Yeah,_ Lou. Can we go back inside? It’s cold as fuck.”

“You’re the one who wanted a fag so bloody bad.”

“You’re the one who agreed to smoke one with me.”

“Stuff it, I wanna go try those date thingies Haz made.”

“They’re fucking insane.”

“ _You’re_ fucking insane.”

“…are they both…are those elf hats?”

“Where’d they even _get_ those?”

“Harry! Leeyum! What the fuck?!”

“… _they’re_ fucking insane, though, really.”

“Aw, yeah. But…”

“Yeah.”

“They’re ours.”

“Yeah.”

“Happy Christmas, by the way. How’s twenty-four feel?”

 “I will feed you to piranhas while Liam watches if you don’t stop talking about it.”

“Nah.”

“Wanna bet, Malik?”

 “You love me too much.”

“Well. You’re not wrong.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was soooo much fun to write, to the point where I went hopelessly overboard. Hopefully it's even half as fun to read. If for some reason my depiction of drug use is off the mark, please feel free to let me know in the comments. 
> 
> Oh, and come say hi at [protagonist-m](protagonist-m.tumblr.com) on tumblr. Y'know. If you wanna. 
> 
> Alright. Thanks for your time, all.


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